Re: [gentoo-dev] New virtuals for libudev and libgudev

[Rich Freeman]

On Sat, Mar 29, 2014 at 4:34 AM, Michał Górny <mgorny@g.o> wrote:
> I have already suggested separate category for perl virtuals but been
> quieted down at the time. I doubt people really want another category
> for virtuals since some of their poor tools rely on 'virtual/'.

So, first the obvious - the "poor tools" are, well, poor.  If we need
a way of distinguishing virtual packages it might make sense to add a
tag to metadata.xml or such, if not to the ebuilds themselves.
Distinguishing by category/name seems like a really bad idea.

But, second, if people really want to have tools that treat virtuals
in a special way, then it seems likely to me that they'd want to be
able to distinguish between "traditional" virtuals and these new
SONAME-driven virtuals.  Of course, I'd still advocate doing it with a
different tag in metadata.xml/etc and not by doing it with the
category when it is a script doing the interpretation.  For us mere
mortals, having multiple virtual categories might be useful.  I can
see the argument about perl (though I wouldn't have minded a
virtual-perl category), but this is a bit different in that this isn't
just another group of packages being virtualized, but a fairly
different use of virtual packages entirely.

Otherwise, thanks for pointing out the use of subslots in the udev/etc
packages themselves.

Rich