Re: [gentoo-dev] Is removing old EAPIs worth the churn?

[Kent Fredric <kentnl@gentoo.org>]

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On Mon, 5 Mar 2018 17:52:54 -0800
Matt Turner <mattst88@gentoo.org> wrote:

> EAPI 2 removal bug: https://bugs.gentoo.org/648050
> 
> It seems like tons of churn to update old stable ebuilds to a new
> EAPI, just for its own sake. Take https://bugs.gentoo.org/648154 for
> example. New ebuild added with EAPI 6 bumped from EAPI 2. Otherwise
> functionally identical. Now asking arch teams to retest and
> restabilize. Multiply by 100 or more.
> 
> In the end we might get to delete some code from portage or an eclass?
> Does this seem worth it?
> 

New EAPI's don't just do nothing, some for example, add more power to
users.

EAPI6 is an especially significant example due to eapply_user becoming
standardized.

And with Perl packages at least, incrementing EAPI results in actual
changes driven by the eclass:

- Changes the names of various control variables
- Makes perl tests on by default, and parallel by default ( previously
  required opt-in )
- Disables the legacy code path that kills the '.packlist' files, which
  are actually useful to some tools, and was the wrong place to kill
  those files in the first place.

Incrementing EAPI also functions as an indicator that legacy approaches
and interfaces are moved away from, which can also signify an
improvement in ebuild quality.

In short, while it looks superficially useless, I'd argue that there's
a lot of nuanced benefits.

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