-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Hi everyone,
Since there were some questions about ambiguity in the meaning of the proposed PROPERTIES=virtual [1] value, we need to clarify it. Just as the "live" property [2] is intended to have a pure and simple meaning, so is the "virtual" property. The "virtual" property will serve only as a hint, to indicate that dependency calculations should consider the package to have zero installation cost (see bug 141118 [3] for an example of why this knowledge is useful). The "virtual" property should not imply anything more than this, and therefore the package manager should assume that the package is to be treated exactly the same as other ebuilds in every other way. The package should be installed and uninstalled just like any other ebuild, including execution of all of the normal ebuild phase functions that would be executed for any other ebuild that does not exhibit the "virtual" property. Ebuilds that exhibit the "virtual" property commonly serve as a layer of indirection in dependencies. All of the ebuilds in the existing "virtual" category [4] should be eligible to define PROPERTIES=virtual. If the ebuilds in the virtual category were the only ones that exhibited this "virtual" property, then the information that PROPERTIES=virtual represents could simply be inferred from membership of that category. However, existence of meta-packages in the "java-virtuals" category [5], among others, makes it useful to introduce the "virtual" property as a means to identify these ebuilds. Note that some packages, such as x11-libs/qt [6], exhibit this property for some versions and not others. So, in some cases it may be useful to be able to specify the "virtual" property separately for different ebuild versions. Do the name and definition of this PROPERTIES=virtual value seem good? Would anybody like to discuss any changes to the name, definition, or both? [1] http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/57610 [2] http://archives.gentoo.org/gentoo-dev/msg_64b83155637bcad67478e2d2af276780.xml [3] http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=141118 [4] http://packages.gentoo.org/category/virtual [5] http://packages.gentoo.org/category/java-virtuals [6] http://packages.gentoo.org/package/x11-libs/qt - -- Thanks, Zac -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.9 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAkixzDsACgkQ/ejvha5XGaMZngCeO6gYmAH1oKEaTNw3uu+K61HW gLcAn0KqYwUkmEdHI2W5v2x+qZBt1dYm =coqO -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
