On Sun, 31 Aug 2008 03:29:16 +0100 Steve Long wrote: > > Except that that's not what it's being used to mean. It's being > > used to mean "the cost of selecting this when doing dependency > > resolution cost analysis is zero", which is an entirely different > > thing. > > > So it's zero-resolution-cost now? No, the overall cost in resolution is potentially non-zero. But the cost of selecting it for an install when resolving it is zero. > Yes, that *is* different (although > I'd use free-resolve. "free" is well understood as often meaning > "zero-cost," which isn't a phrase most English-speaking people use. > It only has meaning within the PROPERTIES variable, so it's not going > to clash with anything.) free means lots of things. > > Users don't need to see it. Heck, most developers don't need to see > > it. > > > Well any dev using it will do, and I believe most of them start out as > users. Anyone reading the ebuild will see it, and the fact that it's a > well-understood term, within Gentoo at least[2], makes it easier for > the PM user-base to work with. virtual is a well-understood term that does not mean what the property being discussed will mean. > It's a cultural "people understand this already" point as opposed to a > technical make-it-as-explicit-as-we-can one. And with this 'understanding' comes lots of misconceptions about what it means. 'virtual' implies lots of things that this property does not. -- Ciaran McCreesh