In terms of QA, unintentional transitive eclass usage is generally bad. This occurs when an ebuild uses functionality from an eclass it doesn't directly inherit. It would be useful for eclasses that allow certain transitive usage (e.g. various python eclasses) to be able to tag that relationship internally so tools can make use of that data.
Along those lines, pkgcheck now has eclass doc parsing support which allows scanning ebuilds for missing, indirect, or unused eclass inherits as well as internal eclass function usage. In order to more closely report valid indirect inherit results, some tag including this data needs to be included for eclasses allowing this relationship. What do interested parties think about including an optional eclass doc tag such as '@TRANSITIVE_INHERITS:' or other similar name in eclasses that allow this? The tag value would be a space-separated list of allowed transitive inherits for the given eclass. Tim
