Re: [gentoo-dev] My wishlist for EAPI 5

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

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On Thu, 21 Jun 2012 09:25:10 +0200
Pacho Ramos <pacho@gentoo.org> wrote:
> Then, looks clear to me that the way to get things approved in newer
> EAPIs is not clear enough as looks like a lot of devs (like me) don't
> know them (for example, when things to be added to EAPI need also a
> GLEP and a PMS diff, also the needing to get an implementation for any
> package manager).

That's very much a judgement call. If a feature is "easy", low impact
and uncontroversial, you can ask for it on IRC, the mailing lists or
bugzilla, and chances are someone will do all the work for you. If it's
a big feature with broad impact requiring lots of changes, you need to
do however much work is necessary such that a) the people working on
PMS understand it well enough to document it, b) developers understand
it well enough to know what it involves for them, c) the Council can
compare and contrast it with other proposals, and d) it can be
implemented.

The "implement it in a package manager" thing is because of what
happened with REQUIRED_USE. It hadn't been implemented previously, and
as it turns out it has some fairly hefty usability issues.

> > > I also don't understand why Gentoo is forced to stick with old
> > > ways of doing things until new EAPI is approved
> > 
> > That's not what's going on here. The issue is that there might be
> > one person who understands what "the new way of doing things", but
> > he hasn't told us what he thinks that is. Once we get a proper
> > explanation, getting an EAPI out doesn't take long.
> > 
> 
> But you must confess that old problems like multilib support, force
> package rebuilding or optional dep support are still pending while
> still needing and, the problem with the way things are discussed now
> is that some day anybody arises the problem again, other one demands
> more things to be provided, a discussion starts, the problem gets
> stalled... one year later the same problem arises again. There is
> clearly a lack of information to the rest of developers about how to
> propose anything to get accepted for next EAPI.

The reason those are still pending is because no-one knows what the
*problem* is, let alone the solution. That's not an EAPI issue, it's a
developers saying "I want a flying unicorn!" issue.

> Then, you accept exherbo is not forced to *only* follow EAPI while you
> force Gentoo and portage to only support features approved in an EAPI?

I think you have a severe misunderstanding of what the EAPI process is
about here... It's not about forcing anything. The point of the EAPI
process is to allow Gentoo to roll things out without requiring
developers to rewrite all their ebuilds every few months (which
happens on Exherbo, incidentally), and without breaking user systems.

-- 
Ciaran McCreesh

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