Am Donnerstag, 27. Dezember 2012, 14:37:37 schrieb Michał Górny:
> 
> a) adding new profiles which will require EAPI=5 and requiring all
> users to migrate to them after upgrading portage. Using new
> use.stable.mask files in those profiles.
> 
> b) adding new profiles (with current EAPIs) and requesting our unstable
> users to migrate to them. Masking the relevant USE flags globally
> and unmasking in those profiles.
> 
> c) 'fixing' the use.stable.mask feature and wording it in such a way
> that it would apply to EAPI 5 (or 6) packages independently of profiles
> EAPI.
> 

As the original proponent of the .stable.mask files, I'd recommend solution 
c). This is what I intended to achieve in the beginning; I accepted to place 
this into a new profile EAPI after I saw no chance of it going into PMS 
otherwise. 

According to PMS, profile directories may contain files not recognized by the 
package manager. A package manager that does not understand the stable.mask 
files will thus -if PMS-compliant- just ignore them.

Solutions a) and b) have the big disadvantage that you will never ever be able 
to use the stable.mask files in the main profile directory or the base profile 
(since there the main profile EAPI setting will apply also in the future). 
Other disadvantages have also been discussed.

-- 
Andreas K. Huettel
Gentoo Linux developer 
dilfridge@gentoo.org
http://www.akhuettel.de/