>>>>> On Wed, 18 Jul 2012, Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
>> Many eclasses (eutils being the most prominent example) contain:
>> DESCRIPTION="Based on the ${ECLASS} eclass"
>>
>> Is this of any use?
> The reason that sort of thing is there is because in the olden days
> before we had specs or EAPIs or anything like that, eclasses were
> originally designed and implemented as "classes" in an OO type manner.
> The idea was that there would be a "base" eclass, and then you'd derive
> "kde", "gnome" etc eclasses from there, all in a nice hierarchy, and
> you'd be expected to "override" variables like DESCRIPTION as you go
> down the tree.
> As it turns out, eclasses ended up being used in a completely different
> way. But you still see bits of the original idea cropping up, such as
> in the words "class" and "inherit" and "base".
Thanks, this explains why these DESCRIPTIONs are there.
But history left aside, are they still useful today? If not, then they
should be removed.
Ulrich
