Re: [gentoo-dev] EAPI usage

[Johannes Huber]

Am Freitag, 31. August 2012, 11:03:06 schrieb Andreas K. Huettel:
> Am Donnerstag, 30. August 2012, 12:57:25 schrieb Rich Freeman:
> > On Thu, Aug 30, 2012 at 6:28 AM, Johannes Huber <johu@g.o> wrote:
> > >> scarabeus suggested the change "dev should use latest eapi when
> > >> bumping"
> > >> to "dev must use latest eapi when bumping if not forbidden by
> > >> eclasses".
> > >> He was asked to bring it up on the mailing lists, to get a better
> > >> definition of when what EAPI should be used.
> > >
> > > I raised the issue through scarabeus, as in my opinion there is no
> > > reason
> > > to not use latest EAPI. So please discuss.
> >
> > I can't say I'm a big fan of this.  This requires forcing changes to
> > ebuilds that offer no actual benefit to either the maintainer or the
> > end-users (changes that actually have some benefit to either are
> > likely to be made anyway).  The PM maintainers have chimed in that
> > there is no benefit to PM maintenance from this change.
> >
> > So, I can't really see what the upside of such a policy is.
>
> <rant>
> Let's say, we as in Gentoo decide that we're completely sick of keeping all
> that old code out there adjusted to newer and newer gcc versions that are
> more and more critical towards minor details of the c++ standards. So, we
> declare that gcc-4.5 has to be enough for everyone, we'll just keep it in
> tree forever and dont bother anymore with all these superfluous "does not
> build with gcc-4.7" bugs.
>
> Well, newer gcc versions might have some very minor marginal advantages, but
> they require that we mess with code that has worked for ages. They require
> that we actually give some thought on the evolution of the language
> semantics or nag upstream, but we can't really be bothered with that
> because of limited time. Also, keeping gcc-4.5 will always (trivially) keep
> us backward compatibility... much more important than forward
> compatibility, should porting to a much never future version ever become
> necessary.
>
> For a real world analogy, serious quakes happen only once a century... why
> should we even bother with improving building codes? I mean, at some point
> in the future things will fall apart anyway. Better dont shake anything in
> between.
> </rant>
>
> Sorry but I could not really resist... please take it with a grain of salt.
> However, seriously, ...
>
> Give me one non-trivial ebuild where you can absolutely guarantee that a
> bump from EAPI=0 to EAPI=4 will not enable any improvements (in
> readability, failsafe behaviour and code size for example).
>
> Last point, if someday the tree contains ebuilds with 7-8 different EAPI's,
> we'll have succeeded in generating an unmaintainable mess (tm). It will not
> be any fun to look up things in PMS anew everytime you edit something. (Was
> the prayer to Paludis only required in EAPI=7 in src_prepare or in EAPI=8
> in pkg_preinst?) This problem could however also be solved by selectively
> phasing out in-between EAPIs (i.e. deprecate EAPIs 1 and 3 asap).

Words of wisdom, nothing to add.

Greetings.

> Cheers,
> Andreas

Cheers,
-- 
Johannes Huber (johu)
Gentoo Linux Developer / KDE Team
GPG Key ID F3CFD2BD