Gentoo Archives: gentoo-dev

From: Ciaran McCreesh <ciaran.mccreesh@××××××××××.com>
To: gentoo-dev@l.g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-dev] new `usex` helper
Date: Wed, 14 Sep 2011 05:35:35
Message-Id: 20110914063438.09cfc9f7@googlemail.com
In Reply to: Re: [gentoo-dev] new `usex` helper by Donnie Berkholz
1 On Tue, 13 Sep 2011 21:02:28 -0500
2 Donnie Berkholz <dberkholz@g.o> wrote:
3 > On 17:56 Tue 13 Sep , Mike Frysinger wrote:
4 > > useful enough for EAPI ? or should i just stick it into
5 > > eutils.eclass ? OR BOTH !?
6 >
7 > I prefer to avoid EAPI whenever possible, as it just makes things
8 > slower and more complex.
9
10 Sticking it in an EAPI *shouldn't* be slow and more complex. There are
11 three reasons why it is, and they should all be within Gentoo's
12 ability to solve.
13
14 The first reason is that when we did what was then called EAPI 3,
15 several Council members refused to put in more than one hour's work
16 every month. To get an EAPI out quickly, we need Council members who
17 are prepared to do a bit of homework, and to read proposals before a
18 meeting and to comment on mailing lists rather than only bringing up
19 questions (most of which have already been answered on the lists) at
20 meetings. That shouldn't be too much to ask, and if it is, Council
21 members should be prepared to delegate.
22
23 The second is that it's impossible to get an accurate estimate from the
24 Portage people for how long it will take to implement something. We
25 were assured before the then-EAPI-3 proposals were submitted to the
26 Council that all would be easy and quick to implement in Portage. We
27 were told after approval that implementation would take a month, when
28 it took a year to get just partial implementations of some features.
29 This needs to be addressed -- to a certain extent we can drop features,
30 but EAPI 4 currently has nasty problems (prefix flag needs to be in
31 IUSE, and people are refusing to do that) due to one of two
32 interdependent features being dropped (strict IUSE) without the
33 standard wording for the other (use dependency defaults) being changed.
34
35 The third is that there are a few people intent on preventing any new
36 EAPI from ever happening. The solution here is to tell them that the
37 decision has been made, that Gentoo is going to use EAPIs and a
38 specification whether they like it or not, and that they can either help
39 or keep quiet. No-one has the time to deal with a small group of
40 individuals who pop up and yell "PMS sucks! EAPIs are bad! Portage is
41 reality! Code to an implementation not a standard!" every time anyone
42 asks for a new feature.
43
44 None of this should be difficult.
45
46 --
47 Ciaran McCreesh

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Re: [gentoo-dev] new `usex` helper Donnie Berkholz <dberkholz@g.o>