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On Mon, Dec 9, 2013 at 5:55 AM, Tom Wijsman <TomWij@g.o> wrote: |
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> For the dependency syntax, having :* as a default breaks things or |
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> causes a lot of work. If explicit slots (or :0) were the default, it |
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> works and you spare out dealing with lots of reverse dependencies when |
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> you introduce a new slot. |
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I was giving this some more thought and here is another way of looking at this. |
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Let A be the set of all situations where it makes sense to create a |
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new slot for a package that has reverse dependencies. |
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Let B be the subset of A where it makes sense for those reverse |
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dependencies to automatically use the new slot without any |
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intervention by the reverse dep maintainers. |
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If |B| >> |A \ B| then the current default makes sense. (That is, if |
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the number of elements in B is much larger than the number of elements |
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in A that aren't in B.) |
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If |B| << |A \ B| then it would make sense to require all slot |
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dependencies to be explicit, and the ":*" dependency to be frowned |
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upon in general. |
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I think that the above just makes sense if you think about it, so I'll |
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use that as my initial premise for what follows. By all means |
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challenge this. |
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So, what I'm going to do now is speculate that B = ∅ (that is B is the |
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empty set). Therefore, it makes sense to get rid of the current |
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default and require all slot deps to be explicit. |
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If you think that B isn't the empty set, it is trivial for you to |
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demonstrate that this is the case. Simply give me a single example of |
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a situation where: |
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1. It makes sense for a dep to use a new slot. |
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2. It makes sense for all of its reverse deps to automatically use |
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the new slot without any further intervention by the individual |
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reverse dep maintainers. |
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I can't think of any, and I'm all ears if somebody else can. It seems |
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to me that our current default optimizes for a situation that is |
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dubious from a QA standpoint. Its main virtue is that you don't have |
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to go look up what the current slot is for slot-less packages, but |
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honestly if you just stuck a :0 on every line of your ebuild chances |
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are it would work on the first install and at least the behavior would |
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be consistent for anybody else who uses it. |
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Rich |
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