On Sunday 20 September 2009 13:28:40 Richard Freeman wrote: > Ryan Hill wrote: > > So, should we always keep a working EAPI 0 version around? If not, when > > can we drop support for old EAPIs? Your opinions please. > > You might want to define what you mean by dropping support for old > EAPIs? Do you mean: > > 1. No longer ensuring that users who have pre-EAPI versions of portage > have a clean upgrade path. > > or > > 2. No longer supporting EAPI=0/1 in package managers.
I think he means neither. We should no longer tolerate pre-EAPI2 ebuilds being added to the tree and should work on migrating all "old" ebuilds as the need arises. Having 3+x EAPIs around (depending on how you count you can end up with twelve) makes things confusing for devs and introduces an unneeded source for accidental errors. > If we want to drop support for EAPI=0/1 then EVERY package in portage > needs to be updated to a more recent EAPI. I suspect we're not there > yet (at the very least all those system packages that are deliberately > held back need to change). It doesn't have to be a forced process. Just prevent "old" EAPIs from being actively used, that'll pull up most packages to a newish EAPI soon. The rest is undermaintained anyway, so if anyone feels bored he can migrate them. > I can see why package managers would benefit from fewer cases to > support, however... I think we should care more about developers and the tools they have instead of package manager developers and the things they may or may not do. At the same time I consider the current development of having EAPI 3 mostly finished, features for EAPI 4 discussed and ideas for EAPI 5 being thrown around to be quite stupid. The whole process needs to slow down. Most devs can't list you the differences between 0, 1 and 2 ... how do you expect them to have any benefit from adding more stuff? Just my 3 cents (inflation-corrected), Patrick
