Re: [gentoo-dev] Don't require assignment of empty variables in ebuilds?

[Mike Frysinger]

On Wednesday 18 July 2012 13:53:37 Ulrich Mueller wrote:
> Our current policy [1] requires that ebuilds must assign the seven
> variables DESCRIPTION, HOMEPAGE, SRC_URI, LICENSE, SLOT, KEYWORDS, and
> IUSE, even if their value is empty.
>
> Could we drop this requirement? Repoman already enforces that
> DESCRIPTION, HOMEPAGE, LICENSE, SLOT, and KEYWORDS are non-empty
> (with some exceptions for virtuals). I don't see why we need to
> distinguish the "empty value" and "not assigned" cases.

i think we should clarify and say that when an eclass provides these, the 
ebuild need not.  completely missing DESCRIPTION/HOMEPAGE should be a warning 
(and maybe KEYWORDS), and LICENSE should be an error.  there are plenty of 
examples of SRC_URI not being set and that's fine (live ebuilds, ebuilds that 
only install out of $FILESDIR, virtuals, etc...).
-mike