Gentoo Archives: gentoo-dev

From: Ciaran McCreesh <ciaran.mccreesh@××××××××××.com>
To: gentoo-dev@l.g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-dev] My wishlist for EAPI 5
Date: Thu, 21 Jun 2012 07:44:46
Message-Id: 20120621083945.345d661a@googlemail.com
In Reply to: Re: [gentoo-dev] My wishlist for EAPI 5 by Pacho Ramos
1 On Thu, 21 Jun 2012 09:25:10 +0200
2 Pacho Ramos <pacho@g.o> wrote:
3 > Then, looks clear to me that the way to get things approved in newer
4 > EAPIs is not clear enough as looks like a lot of devs (like me) don't
5 > know them (for example, when things to be added to EAPI need also a
6 > GLEP and a PMS diff, also the needing to get an implementation for any
7 > package manager).
8
9 That's very much a judgement call. If a feature is "easy", low impact
10 and uncontroversial, you can ask for it on IRC, the mailing lists or
11 bugzilla, and chances are someone will do all the work for you. If it's
12 a big feature with broad impact requiring lots of changes, you need to
13 do however much work is necessary such that a) the people working on
14 PMS understand it well enough to document it, b) developers understand
15 it well enough to know what it involves for them, c) the Council can
16 compare and contrast it with other proposals, and d) it can be
17 implemented.
18
19 The "implement it in a package manager" thing is because of what
20 happened with REQUIRED_USE. It hadn't been implemented previously, and
21 as it turns out it has some fairly hefty usability issues.
22
23 > > > I also don't understand why Gentoo is forced to stick with old
24 > > > ways of doing things until new EAPI is approved
25 > >
26 > > That's not what's going on here. The issue is that there might be
27 > > one person who understands what "the new way of doing things", but
28 > > he hasn't told us what he thinks that is. Once we get a proper
29 > > explanation, getting an EAPI out doesn't take long.
30 > >
31 >
32 > But you must confess that old problems like multilib support, force
33 > package rebuilding or optional dep support are still pending while
34 > still needing and, the problem with the way things are discussed now
35 > is that some day anybody arises the problem again, other one demands
36 > more things to be provided, a discussion starts, the problem gets
37 > stalled... one year later the same problem arises again. There is
38 > clearly a lack of information to the rest of developers about how to
39 > propose anything to get accepted for next EAPI.
40
41 The reason those are still pending is because no-one knows what the
42 *problem* is, let alone the solution. That's not an EAPI issue, it's a
43 developers saying "I want a flying unicorn!" issue.
44
45 > Then, you accept exherbo is not forced to *only* follow EAPI while you
46 > force Gentoo and portage to only support features approved in an EAPI?
47
48 I think you have a severe misunderstanding of what the EAPI process is
49 about here... It's not about forcing anything. The point of the EAPI
50 process is to allow Gentoo to roll things out without requiring
51 developers to rewrite all their ebuilds every few months (which
52 happens on Exherbo, incidentally), and without breaking user systems.
53
54 --
55 Ciaran McCreesh

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Re: [gentoo-dev] My wishlist for EAPI 5 Pacho Ramos <pacho@g.o>