On Mon, 18 May 2009 00:08:05 +0200
Ben de Groot <yngwin@gentoo.org> wrote:
> > There are already horrible hacks in the tree to get per-package
> > 'eclasses'. That's a clear sign there's something lacking.
> 
> I haven't come across any horrible hacks, that I'm aware of, but of
> course my interest is only in certain parts of the tree.

Read the glibc ebuilds sometime. Notice the 'eblits' nonsense.

> > It means we can't start using those new global scope functions until
> > we're sure that everyone's going to be upgraded, because users get
> > extremely upset if they start seeing that kind of message.
> 
> Isn't that a given anyway? I think the way eapi-2 was introduced into
> the tree wasn't particularly problematic.

There's a difference between the clean "unsupported EAPIs are treated
as masked" behaviour you get with EAPIs done properly, and the horrible
spammy errors you get if they aren't. New global scope functions cause
the latter; new EAPIs done cleanly cause only the former.

> > Please explain why 1.2_rc3 is legal but 1.2-rc3 is not.
> 
> Because we say so. We have chosen to do it a certain way. This works.
> It's uniform, it's simple, and therefor has a certain beauty to it. I
> see no pressing reason why we should start allowing alternative forms.

It's an utterly arbitrary restriction. Upstreams don't standardise
either way on - vs _, so there's no reason Gentoo should.

-- 
Ciaran McCreesh