Re: [gentoo-dev] The fun of being a PDEPEND

[Zac Medico]

On 08/10/2011 10:19 PM, Fabio Erculiani wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 11, 2011 at 1:31 AM, Zac Medico <zmedico@g.o> wrote:
>> On 08/10/2011 02:14 PM, Fabio Erculiani wrote:
>>> The problem here is that Portage enforces the same rule by trying to
>>> schedule the PDEPEND "as soon as possible"
>>
>> This behavior was introduced in order to solve bug 180045 [1].
>>
>> We can accomplish similar results to the ASAP ("as soon as possible")
>> behavior in cases like this, if we create a virtual/meta-package that
>> pulls in the circularly dependent packages. We also havo to update the
>> reverse dependencies to refer to the virtual/meta-package.
>
> In case of dev-java/jdom and dev-java/jdom-jaxen my idea was to create
> virtual/jdom (having it to pull in both deps in RDEPEND) and update
> the reverse dependencies. Waiting to hear back from Java herd (Caster,
> actually).

The ASAP behavior seems relatively optimal, which makes it difficult to
argue that ebuild maintainers should have to go to the trouble of
creating virtuals and updating reverse dependencies.

It seems like your setting up an ongoing conflict with ebuild
maintainers if you don't implement the ASAP behavior. Isn't it worth
your trouble to implement the ASAP behavior, just to get them out of
your hair?

> OTOH, I think that the gray area should be cleared out by clearly
> stating what is legal or not in an updated EAPI. Isn't that
> reasonable?

It's already been allowed for years, so a new EAPI would only make sense
if your taking away the ASAP behavior, which seems like a step
backwards. Given the push-back that you're likely to get from ebuild
developers over time, I think you're much better off if you just
implement the ASAP behavior.
-- 
Thanks,
Zac