Re: [gentoo-dev] GLEP 22: New "keyword" system to incorporate various userlands/kernels/archs

[Drake Wyrm]

On Tue, 2004-03-09, 12:47:26 +0900, in
<200403091247.27117.jstubbs@g.o>, Jason Stubbs
<jstubbs@g.o> wrote:
> Problem: The current proposal can not specify which permutations are
> valid.

What is the problem with that? The purpose for this proposal is to allow
people to try permutations which are currently unavailable. We should
include the functionality which allows people to try the things we think
are impossible.

[snip]
> Next I'll look at USERLAND. As far as I know, it's not possible to run
> a gnu USERLAND on anything other than a glibc LIBC. Conversely, a bsd
> USERLAND cannot run on a glibc LIBC. I can only imagine very rare
> circumstances where a LIBC would support multiple USERLANDs and an
> application would care what specific USERLAND it is.

I was thinking the same thing from the other point of view: "USERLAND"
implies a particular "LIBC", right? Since we already use "USERLAND",
drop LIBC and roll the functionality into "USERLAND".

Then again it might be interesting to leave that functionality and see
if somebody decides to try it. 

[snip]
> Of course, this idea is based on dropping ~arch and arch altogether. I
> don't have a non-x86 arch (yet!) but as far as I know most software
> will work with no modification.

Good idea. How about dropping KEYWORDS altogether? Replace it with the
system described in the current proposal and a set of FEATURES and
RESTRICT flags: "stable", "testing", and "masked".

> For software that doesn't work and a quick fix can't be found, I would
> suggest a new portage/profiles/<profile>/package.mask.

Ewww. Yet another config file. I'll pass.

Actually, I suddenly like that FEATURES/RESTRICT idea. Something like
the following could be included in ebuild.sh:

pkg_mask() {
	local stable-keywords="x86 ppc ppc64 sparc mips alpha arm hppa amd64 ia64 ia64 s390"
	local testing-keywords="~x86 ~ppc ~ppc64 ~sparc ~mips ~alpha ~arm ~hppa ~amd64 ~ia64 ~ia64 ~s390"
	set_restrict masked # mask by default
	# reverse compatibility spiffiness
	if has $ACCEPT_KEYWORDS $testing-keywords && has $ACCEPT_KEYWORDS $KEYWORDS
	then
		set_restrict testing
	fi
	if has $ACCEPT_KEYWORDS $stable-keywords && has $ACCEPT_KEYWORDS $KEYWORDS
		set_restrict stable
	fi
	has masked $FEATURES && return 0
	has testing $FEATURES && has testing $RESTRICT && return 0
	has stable $RESTRICT && return 0
	return 1
}

To use the features proposed by this GLEP, an ebuild could write its own
pkg_mask function.

-- 
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Kusanagi: I understand the concept, but I've never seen it in action.
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