From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org ([69.77.167.62] helo=lists.gentoo.org) by finch.gentoo.org with esmtp (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1KbdOU-00018V-Cz for garchives@archives.gentoo.org; Fri, 05 Sep 2008 15:38:42 +0000 Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with SMTP id D5B59E042B; Fri, 5 Sep 2008 15:38:41 +0000 (UTC) Received: from shadow.wildlava.net (shadow.wildlava.net [67.40.138.81]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B58B4E042B for ; Fri, 5 Sep 2008 15:38:41 +0000 (UTC) Received: from [10.0.3.98] (mail.boulder.swri.edu [65.241.78.2]) (using TLSv1 with cipher DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by shadow.wildlava.net (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id D53A88F426 for ; Fri, 5 Sep 2008 09:38:39 -0600 (MDT) Message-ID: <48C15278.2040601@gentoo.org> Date: Fri, 05 Sep 2008 09:38:32 -0600 From: Joe Peterson User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.9 (X11/20071119) Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Id: Gentoo Linux mail X-BeenThere: gentoo-dev@lists.gentoo.org Reply-to: gentoo-dev@lists.gentoo.org MIME-Version: 1.0 To: gentoo-dev@lists.gentoo.org Subject: Re: [gentoo-dev] [RFC] PROPERTIES=virtual for meta-packages (clarification of definition) References: <48B1CC3C.2000103@gentoo.org> <20080905154427.a3c9e04b.genone@gentoo.org> In-Reply-To: <20080905154427.a3c9e04b.genone@gentoo.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Archives-Salt: 5cca6148-4c76-46a7-a08b-7ac5706ae58f X-Archives-Hash: a0313c474f8e1a4cc042b21de5f36dc4 Marius Mauch wrote: > If it's only used to indicate that the package doesn't install any > files I'd suggest to use 'empty' or 'nocontents' instead. 'virtual' > somehow implies that it's only applicable to packages in the 'virtual' > category, which isn't the case with the given definition (as you said). I like "virtual", since it really gets at the spirit of what the ebuild does. "empty" sounds like it does nothing at all, and "nocontents" sounds that way to, to me. An analogy to "virtual" is a virtual method in OO programming - it sits at a high level, does nothing in itself, but causes underlying methods to perform the work. -Joe