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

[Jim Ramsay <lack@gentoo.org>]

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Ciaran McCreesh <ciaran.mccreesh@googlemail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, 24 Feb 2009 15:07:29 -0500
> Jim Ramsay <lack@gentoo.org> wrote:
> > I think
> > things are very nicely documented in PMS and the devmanual, which
> > are where all EAPI changes should be documented in the future,
> > regardless if you specify the EAPI in the file, the extension, or
> > both.
> 
> 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.

> > Two levels really just means that any fancy tables will have to have
> > one extra row (or perhaps a series of fancy tables) and any
> > summaries will have to have an extra section added whenever a new
> > filename extension becomes necessary.
> 
> It'll mean people will carry on having to use the tables, and won't
> start remembering things as time goes on.

See comment above.  The need for documentation will only increase going
forward as new and varied EAPI definitions are created.

> > If I understand the '.eapi3.eb' to which you make passing reference,
> > this is just a fancy hand-wavy way to say "Look, the true .eb
> > extension won't ever change, just the .eapi3 part which isn't
> > technically the extension..." which isn't a compromise at all - It's
> > an attempt to (cleverly?) obfuscate where in the filename the EAPI
> > is stored.
> 
> Yup. And yet there're people who are perfectly happy with .eapi3.eb
> who hate GLEP 55. That should tell you all you need to know about
> what's going on here...

Seriously?  That's scary.  But hey, if that's actually going to get
more people behind this, let's do it instead.

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

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