[gentoo-dev] Re: bash version in ebuilds/eclasses...non-compliance and what to do?

[Steve Long <slong@rathaus.eclipse.co.uk>]

Jeremy Olexa wrote:

> This causes me pain on my hosts that don't have >=bash-3.1[0] for
> /bin/bash. Because I can't install portage with an old bash until I
> get a new python installed which uses python.eclass which isn't
> supported with my /bin/bash (quite circular indeed)
> 
> Technically there are workarounds for me...but it is still annoying.
> So...what do we do? A) Specifically allow >=bash-3.1 features in
> ebuilds/eclasses. or B) revert the commit because the PMS says[1] that
> we comply with >bash-3.0
> 
> Please discuss, thanks.

I'd vote for updating the spec; it's going to be a pita trying to maintain
the tree without +=. From our discussion, you said it was fine for prefix
to specify a minimum version of bash for bootstrap, but clearly that can't
be 3.1 when the draft PMS says 3.0.

I note that bash-3.2_p17-r1 is stable on all the architectures that 3.0-r12
lists (it just adds the two -fbsd archs as unstable.) portage-2.1.4.5
requires at least that version (only unstable on mips as against 2.1.1-r2)
It might be worth skipping to 3.2, since that would simplify regex handling.

Not sure how that should be framed, or when it's okay to do it; clearly a
spec has to be updatable, whether it's by a specified policy, or
explicitly.