On Wednesday 18 December 2013 17:20:32 Greg Turner wrote:
> My hunch is that the decision to put the config.{sub,guess}
> replacement code in econf was intended as a quick-and-dirty way to
> avoid doing the replacements, in cases where no configure script runs
> in an ebuild.

it was intended as the easy answer so that all packages would get it "for 
free".  previously, we had an eclass, and had to update every single package 
to call a function in that eclass.  it sucked hard.  it makes sense to have it 
in `econf` because that func is only used in conjunction with autotool based 
packages.

> Post EAPI-2, the convention that hacking on the sources in "${S}"  is
> a "no-no" after src_prepare has clearly crystallized considerably (I'm
> guessing the code has EAPI-[01] origins); violating that convention in
> econf seems awkward.

this code existed long before EAPI was ever a thing

> o It doesn't run, if, for some reason, the ebuild must invoke
>    configure directly rather than use econf

this happens in like 3 packages.  we can suck it up.

> o when econf is invoked repeatedly, it does the same
>    O(# of dirs in ${S}) noop over and over

true, but it hasn't been a big enough deal for us to care

> In short... moving the config.{sub,guess} replacement code (but
> probably not the shebang patching for reasons of expedience) to some
> post-src_prepare place would probably be more elegant and pretty easy
> to do.

that discussion should happen on gentoo-dev in conjunction with PMS.  or file a 
bug if there isn't one already.
-mike