Re: [gentoo-dev] pkg_pretend USE validation and VALID_USE alternative

[Ciaran McCreesh <ciaran.mccreesh@googlemail.com>]

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On Thu, 1 Apr 2010 21:39:43 +0300
Dror Levin <spatz@gentoo.org> wrote:
> > If anyone's been personal and insulting in this discussion, it isn't
> > Ciaran.
>  
> I'll take that as an April Fools' day joke.

Could you point out where I've been personal and insulting in this
discussion please? I'd like to learn for future reference the kind of
technical criticisms that you mistake for insults so that I can phrase
them in a way less likely to mislead in the future.

> I really like this attitude, though. Once you're done criticizing the
> technological aspects of some proposal you start raising concerns
> about how hard it is to implement features for Portage, how long that
> takes, etc. Well, since that's not really constructive, I suggest you
> keep those concerns to yourself.

So you're saying that when designing EAPIs, we should no longer
consider Portage implementation time?

Currently, one of the requirements for including a feature in an EAPI
is that the Portage people expect to be able to deliver it quickly.
We've left out a huge number of widely requested features from previous
EAPIs simply because they weren't considered deliverable by Portage in
a realistic timeframe, and when selecting features we've been careful
to pick those that require the minimum total amount of work on the
Portage side. Hence pkg_pretend -- although a subset of its
functionality could be handled in other ways, it's considered most
practical to go for the single cheapest feature that implements
everything people need.

Would you prefer a perfect EAPI ten years from now and nothing until
then, or a better EAPI than one that we currently have one year from
now? The Council has been pretty explicit in wanting the latter, so if
you want policy to be changed to the former then you'll need to take it
up with them.

-- 
Ciaran McCreesh

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