Re: [gentoo-dev] Versioning of eclasses and possibly functions inside ebuilds

[Francesco Riosa <vivo75@gmail.com>]

2011/12/28 Zac Medico <zmedico@gentoo.org>:
> On 12/28/2011 05:12 AM, Francesco Riosa wrote:
>> Seem to me that append a time slice to the function, in the name or as
>> a parent function that call the underling function can solve most of
>> the versioning/deprecation problems
>
> I've overheard Arfrever discussing a similar approach in funtoo's irc
> channel, where the ebuild would set a variable prior to inherit if it
> wants to use a specific eclass API. For the python eclass, he's planning
> to have ebuilds set the PYTHON_ECLASS_API variable to use the new API.
> When the variable is unset, the eclass will default to the older API.

There is a fundamental difference, with "timeslices" it's not the
ebuild that select the implementation but the point in time it's used,
or the user forcing a fake time. From what I've read Artfever approach
require changes in every ebuild and keeping old functions forever. On
the other hand it may be risky to change the preferred interface from
the eclass and not the ebuild.

Thanks for reviewing,
Francesco