Hi Mike, > I would like to remove the ban on variable references in the HOMEPAGE > variable in ebuilds. > > As I understand it, this ban was put in place so that people can > easily copy/paste from an ebuild to a web browser.
It made it also possible to grep through the packages and find thousand dead HOMEPAGES like [1] and many more. If the HOMEPAGE is constructed by the power of bash variables it is hard to track and to use. We have already some HOMEPAGES which are constructed by eclass magic [2]. These do not link to a useful website usually. A string is also less error prone. We have already many broken HOMEPAGES. This number would only increase if we add variables. On the other hand it does not safe very much time for the maintainer. Ebuilds are written once, but read many times. Hence I suggest KISS (keep it simple stupid) and stick to the real URL without variables. [1] https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Upstream_repository_shutdowns [2] https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=624498 -- Best, Jonas
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