On 13/03/12 02:23, Neil Bothwick wrote:
On Tue, 13 Mar 2012 01:54:30 +0200, Nikos Chantziaras wrote:
Anyone care to offer an opinion on what it will take to get PROVIDES
support in portage?
IMO, it would take virtuals causing so many headachy breakages that
some devs started keeping up a steady drumbeat on irc and mailing
lists. When the number of virtual packages gets close to a thousand,
I'd guess that might happen. Then there would be years of discussion
and GLEP proposals, and by EAPI 207 it should be done.
The problem isn't the amount of virtuals. This doesn't affect the
users much. It's the inability for people to offer replacement
packages in overlays.
They could include a modified virtual in the overlay, but your point is
valid; including the information in the ebuilds is more flexible.
This only works if portage has a virtual. If it doesn't, you're
screwed. You need to also provide modified packages of all ebuilds
depending on the package you're offering a replacement for. As you can
guess, it's not practical.
This leaves only one option; have users put the original package in
package.provided and emerge your replacement as a non-dep (going in
"world".)
