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Hello, everyone. |
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Since the previous thread doesn't seem to have brought any good |
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solution to the problem other than stopping to (ab)use LINGUAS |
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as USE_EXPAND, I would like to start a RFC on a draft solution that |
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I'd like afterwards to propose to the Council. |
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Rationale |
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--------- |
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|
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The direct reason for this is that LINGUAS is treated as non-standard |
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special variable by multiple build systems. This includes the following |
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problems: |
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|
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1. no localizations are installed if it is set to an empty value (which |
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happens in EAPI 5 when the ebuild does not use the flags), |
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2. there were historical cases where order of LINGUAS mattered. |
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Those problems can't be reasonably solved within the scope of |
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USE_EXPAND. Furthermore, the use of flags to control localizations is |
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causing the following problems: |
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|
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a. maintaining correct flag list is a serious maintenance burden, |
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especially that differences in build systems make it hard to figure out |
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the 'most correct' set automatically, |
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b. missing flags result in localizations being silently dropped, with |
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no clear way (i.e. for QA check) to detect that, |
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c. large number of additional USE flags make it pretty much impossible |
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to limit localizations this way when using binary packages. |
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The plan |
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-------- |
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1. Get approval on INSTALL_MASK GLEP [1] and finish implementing it |
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in Portage. |
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|
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2. Introduce a new USE_EXPAND that can be used to control localizations |
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whenever this is really required (dependencies, large files, etc.). |
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Let's use L10N as a draft name for it. |
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3. Fix all packages using LINGUAS as USE_EXPAND, either by converting |
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to L10N or by removing the needless flags. |
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4. Remove LINGUAS from USE_EXPAND, therefore removing the special EAPI |
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rules from the variable. |
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5. Release a news item explaining the users the change, |
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and the necessary action. Request changing LINGUAS to L10N |
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in make.conf, and make LINGUAS considered an 'advanced variable' for |
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implicit localization control (i.e. passed through to build systems). |
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Recommend clean INSTALL_MASK solution instead. |
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The example 'new' make.conf would probably look like: |
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# controlling e.g. langpacks |
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L10N="en_US pl" |
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# stripping unneeded files |
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INSTALL_MASK="@linguas -@linguas_pl" |
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Your thoughts? |
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[1]:https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/User:MGorny/GLEP:INSTALL_MASK |
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|
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-- |
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Best regards, |
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Michał Górny |
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<http://dev.gentoo.org/~mgorny/> |
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