Re: [gentoo-dev] About what would be included in EAPI5

[Ciaran McCreesh]

On Sat, 16 Jun 2012 16:48:20 +0200
Pacho Ramos <pacho@g.o> wrote:
> Regarding the comparison with using only SLOT, the most clear example
> of how that solution was a bit worse was that glib vs
> dbus-glib/gobject-introspection handling:
> - Using only SLOT with := would end up with we needing to update
> ebuilds for packages depending on glib on each SLOT bump, that is
> completely inviable.

What about if ranged dependencies existed?

Also, we've yet to establish whether SLOT-with-/ really solves this
problem, nor whether the problem is a general one. How many packages
are there with stable APIs but unstable ABIs?

> - I suggested then to be able to make that packages depend on :* (for
> example, dev-libs/glib:2.*:=, that way, that packages wouldn't need to
> get their ebuilds updated as they would still fit inside "2.*" case,
> but would still get rebuild (as wanted) due := usage... but you also
> didn't like this approach.

You're misunderstanding the point of the * there. The * has nothing to
do with wildcarding.

> > > About what I am trying to solve, I have explained it multiple
> > > times in involved thread and won't repeat them once again.
> >
> > Describing the problem clearly and correctly, and in the appropriate
> > amount of generality, is the hardest and most important part of the
> > process. Figuring out what we're trying to solve is far harder than
> > writing a bit of code.
>
> What I try to do is to replace the needing of manually rebuilding
> packages after updates due ABI changes, like currently occurs with
> xorg drivers, g-i and dbus-glib, ocaml-c based apps and cases like
> that.

See, that's not really a description of the problem. It's a good start,
but I'd expect a full description to run to be several pages of
detailed description of the general case, along with worked out
examples. This isn't an easy issue, and we don't want to come up with a
solution that works for one particular package whilst ignoring the
needs of everything else.

> Regarding other problems like needing to use perl-cleaner,
> python-updater looks to be covered by another approach of "dynamic
> slots" I have just seen in gentoo-dev IRC channel by mgorny, then,
> that kind of issues would be uncovered with this (but maybe I am
> wrong as I know Zac had a more clear conception about how this
> ABI_SLOT way would work and what would it cover)

Somehow I don't think this cunning plan has been thought all the way
through...

Coming up with a "solution" rather than a description of the problem is
the wrong thing to do.

-- 
Ciaran McCreesh