Re: [gentoo-dev] Issues regarding glep-55 (Was: [gentoo-council] Re: Preliminary Meeting-Topics for 12 February 2009)

[Jim Ramsay]

Ciaran McCreesh <ciaran.mccreesh@××××××××××.com> wrote:
> On Tue, 24 Feb 2009 15:37:36 -0500
> Jim Ramsay <lack@g.o> wrote:
> > > They only ended up nicely documented after people moaned a lot
> > > that they were having a hard time keeping track of EAPIs...
> >
> > You can't possibly be suggesting that everyone will be able to keep
> > an ever-increasing number of feature sets in his or her mind, or
> > that changing from a two-level to a one-level EAPI definition will
> > remove the need for documentation going forward, so I'm not sure
> > what you mean by this.
>
> That's exactly what I mean. Developers can probably just about keep up
> with the two or three EAPIs they'll ever be working with on a regular
> basis, but they probably can't keep up with that if you double it.

Well, if you're assuming only two or three EAPIs in 'mental cache' at
any one time under glep-55, I'm not sure how this changes wrt. a
two-level system.  A two-level system doesn't change the number of
EAPIs in the tree or available to developers, it just changes how they
are named.

Regardless, this does not remove the need for documentation.  All
the EAPIs should be documented in both the PMS and the devmanual.  This
makes it possible for new developers to learn about the current
features available, and also helps existing devs who may need to
recover from 'mental page faults' from time to time.

-- 
Jim Ramsay
Gentoo Developer (rox/fluxbox/gkrellm/vim)