Re: [gentoo-dev] RFD: EAPI specification in ebuilds

[Zac Medico <zmedico@gentoo.org>]

On 03/08/2012 08:35 AM, Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
> On Thu, 08 Mar 2012 08:30:57 -0800
> Zac Medico<zmedico@gentoo.org>  wrote:
>> On 03/08/2012 01:42 AM, Marc Schiffbauer wrote:
>>> * Ulrich Mueller schrieb am 08.03.12 um 08:27 Uhr:
>>>> Such constructs also cannot be used with any of the other proposed
>>>> solutions. And in fact, nobody is using such things in practice.
>>>> _All_ ebuilds in the Portage tree can be successfully parsed with
>>>> the regexp proposed.
>>>
>>> Ebuilds are bash scripts. I think introducing exceptions or
>>> constraints here is not straightforward.
>>
>> Given that ebuilds already have to conform to a vast number of
>> constraints that ordinary bash scripts do not. I think that it's
>> perfectly reasonable for ebuilds to have a constrained syntax for
>> EAPI assignments.
>
> ...and only EAPI assignments? Not for any other metadata variable?

It's only needed for the EAPI, since that's the only value defined by 
the ebuild that we intend to use to control how the global environment 
is initialized prior to sourcing of the ebuild.

> Doesn't that sort of suggest that EAPI shouldn't be a metadata variable?

It's a very special metadata variable. Of course, it could also be 
implemented in many different ways that do not involve bash variable 
assingments. Maybe the differences between the various possible ways 
truly make a difference to some people, but to me it's just 
hair-splitting [1].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trivial_objections
-- 
Thanks,
Zac