2010-01-11 08:50:30 Fabian Groffen napisał(a):
> On 11-01-2010 01:25:45 +0100, Arfrever Frehtes Taifersar Arahesis wrote:
> > > Can you explain the intended use of this variable, and why normal DEPEND
> > > is not sufficient?
> > 
> > PYTHON_DEPEND is intented to simplify specification of dependency on Python.
> > 
> > PYTHON_DEPEND="2:2.5" is shorter than:
> > DEPEND="|| ( =dev-lang/python-2.7* =dev-lang/python-2.6* =dev-lang/python-2.5* )"
> 
> So if there is enough space to express the dependency with the current
> syntax, is it worth introducing a new shorthand for it then?

Some eclasses already support some shorthands for specification of some
dependencies (e.g. need_apache2() in depend.apache.eclass).
As maintainer of some packages depending on Python, I express interest in
possibility of brief specification of dependency on Python. I won't be
enforcing using of this variable for developers, who want to directly
specify dependencies in {,R}DEPEND.

> Also for this example, why does 2:2.5 expand to 2.7, 2.6 and 2.5?  I
> would have expected 2.0 ... 2.5.

The first component ('2') specifies the group of accepted versions.
The second component ('2.5') specifies the minimal accepted version inside
this group. ('2:2.5' is identical to '2:2.5:'.)

-- 
Arfrever Frehtes Taifersar Arahesis