On 23:13 Mon 08 Sep     , Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
> On Mon, 8 Sep 2008 14:33:50 -0700
> Donnie Berkholz <dberkholz@gentoo.org> wrote:
> > On 12:46 Sun 07 Sep     , Marcus D. Hanwell wrote:
> > > I personally agree with several others who have replied to this
> > > thread. The reduction in lines of code/characters seems to
> > > introduce an uglier syntax which is harder to read with
> > > questionable benefits.
> > 
> > One of the great things about ebuilds is that they're very natural to 
> > write in most cases, if you can manage to build the program by hand. 
> > Raising this barrier of entry for questionable benefit seems like a
> > bad idea. We don't need to make it any harder to begin contributing
> > to Gentoo.
> 
> So why are we making people know the exact ins and outs of
> reimplementing default functions, complete with knowledge of whether or
> not to use die, when all they need in most cases is to set a simple
> variable instead?

This series of variables and syntaxes within them doesn't seem much 
simpler than functions. From what I understand, it also conflates 
multiple concepts into a single variable name (the function name, 
whether it's USE-dependent, and how the configure flag is passed).

> What proportion of people do you think know whether or not you need a 
> die with econf or emake? How many user-written ebuilds out there 
> correctly install the right docs and don't try to install docs that 
> don't exist, deal with install parallelisation correctly and handle 
> error cases properly?

You're right, following all of the policy takes work. What I'm talking 
about is an entry-level ebuild hack that just gets people in the door 
and is the reason a lot of people love Gentoo.

-- 
Thanks,
Donnie

Donnie Berkholz
Developer, Gentoo Linux
Blog: http://dberkholz.wordpress.com