Re: [gentoo-pms] [PATCH] Remove cat/foo:* slot operator.

[Brian Harring <ferringb@gmail.com>]

On Mon, Sep 10, 2012 at 07:39:47AM +0100, Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
> On Sun,  9 Sep 2012 13:12:43 -0700
> Brian Harring <ferringb@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Introduced originally via 8b54be6a, this is effectively a noop for
> > gentoo ebuilds- nor is it providing any useful information to either
> > the dev, or the PM, thus remove it.
> 
> The point of :* is to allow repoman to detect situations where a
> package has a build and a run dep upon something that has multiple
> slots, and to remind the developer that they either need to := it, or
> to explicitly say that it's ok for slots to change.

Related, slot dep operators don't have any meaning in DEPEND; 
shouldn't be usable in that case then (considering the binding 
behaviour, it's only relevant to PDEPEND/RDEPEND).

> Without :*, there's no way to tell the difference between "the
> developer forgot, or slots were added in later", and "this really can
> switch slots at runtime".

The implication of this is that basically every damn ebuild's going to 
grow :* however; that's rather ugly, and I'm not particularly sure 
that's what folks signed up for.

Either way, the wording should include this justification; as is, it 
reads as a no-op.

Current wording:

"""
Indicates that any slot value is acceptable. In addition, for runtime 
dependencies, indicates that the package will not break if the matched 
package is uninstalled and replaced by a different matching package 
in a different slot.
"""

alternative-
"""
Indicate that despite multiple slottings matching, this is known, and
acceptable for the slotting to change at runtime.  Ebuilds by default
should not use unless necessary; the absense of this operator can be
used by QA tools to detect potential breakage when a pkg is being 
converted to slotted.
"""

Roughly.  English ain't the forte- point is, include the reasoning and 
the clarification for when it should actually be used (the original 
text describes what it does, not why/when you should use it).

~harring