[gentoo-dev] Re: EGO_SUM

[Florian Schmaus <flow@gentoo.org>]

Hi Sam,

thanks for your feedback. I am glad for everyone who engages in this 
discussion and shares their views and new information.

On 24/04/2023 22.28, Sam James wrote:
> Florian Schmaus <flow@gentoo.org> writes:
> 
> [CCing williamh@ as go-module.eclass & dev-lang/go maintainer.]
> 
>> I like to ask the Gentoo council to vote on whether EGO_SUM should be
>> reinstated ("un-deprecated") or not > In the various previous discussions, the need
> for _some_ limit to be implemented (derived from EGO_SUM) was clear from
> the QA team and others.

Asking to impose an artificial limit is based on the same unfounded 
belief under which EGO_SUM was deprecated in the first place. I am 
worried that if we follow this, then a potential next step is to argue 
about adding packages to ::gentoo.


> Voting on the matter now would be reopening the issue which led EGO_SUM
> to be deprecated in the first place, with only a partial mitigation
> (the Portage warning).

I am sorry, but I do not follow. I think this is partly because it is 
not clear "what" (else) to mitigate.

The discussion would be more productive if someone who is supporting the 
EGO_SUM deprecation could rationally summarize the main arguments why we 
deprecated EGO_SUM.


> Any such limit should be supported by pkgcheck, allow using EGO_SUM
> for most packages, but exclude the pathological cases which we're
> unlikely to want in ::gentoo.
> 
> (Limit-per-ebuild rather than per-package is one option of many,
> too.)

As you probably noticed, I am not aware why we should impose such a 
limit. Especially a per-package limit confines the ability to provide 
the user with multiple versions of a package, which sometimes comes in 
handy [1].


>> Most voices on the related mailing-list threads expressed support for
>> reinstating EGO_SUM. At least, that is my impression. While the
>> arguments used to deprecate EGO_SUM were mostly of esthetic nature.
>>
>> I want to state what should be common sense. Namely, asking for a
>> democratic vote is not a personal attack against any involved
>> person.
>> [...]
> 
> I agree this is an important issue that affects the practicality
> of using Gentoo for some, and for contributing to Gentoo to others.

Same data point: Just in the last few days, multiple users reported in 
#-guru issues they wouldn't have had if EGO_SUM was not deprecated.

- Flow

1: From my experience, this is also something Gentoo is praised for.