[gentoo-dev] February 2014 QA policy updates

[Chris Reffett]

Hello all,
The following are the policy changes from this month's QA team meeting:

-USE=multislot (and other USE-dependent SLOT values) need to be removed
from the tree. Toolchain can keep it in an overlay if they want. We
would consider it acceptable to remove USE=multislot from the tree but
keep the eclasses as-is, so that toolchain doesn't need to maintain multiple
eclasses. This does not affect sys-boot/grub's USE=multislot, as that
does not mangle the SLOT value like the others (as I understand it).

-Regarding the gtk/gtk2/gtk3 USE flag situation: we mandate that gtk
move to versioned USE flags. For simplicity of migration, we will allow
USE=gtk to mean "depend on gtk2," since there are only a few USE=gtk2
remaining in tree. USE=gtk3 will mean "depend on gtk3," and in the
future, USE=gtk4 will mean "depend on gtk4," and so on. USE=gtk may
not be used to mean "depend on some version of gtk."

-More generally: we recommend that in future situations like this (a package
can optionally depend on different versions of a library), we recommend the
use of versioned USE flags. It should be discussed with the QA team either
way.

Also, on a non-policy note, we recommend that the Council deprecate
EAPIs 0 and 3 (0 pending discussion with toolchain) and ban EAPI 1. As
always, if you have questions, feel free to ping us in #gentoo-qa. The meeting
summary and these policies will be available on the Quality Assurance page
on the Gentoo Wiki tonight or tomorrow.

Chris Reffett
Gentoo QA Lead