Category: Ebuild writing

No more PYTHON_TARGETS in single-r1

Since its inception in 2012, python-single-r1 has been haunting users with two sets of USE flags: PYTHON_TARGETS and PYTHON_SINGLE_TARGET. While this initially seemed a necessary part of the grand design, today I know we could have done better. Today this chymera is disappearing for real, and python-single-r1 are going to use PYTHON_SINGLE_TARGET flags only.

I would like to take this opportunity to explain why the eclass has been designed this way in the first place, and what has been done to change that.
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A better ebuild workflow with pure git and pkgcheck

Many developers today continue using repoman commit as their primary way of committing to Gentoo. While this tool was quite helpful, if not indispensable in times of CVS, today it’s a burden. The workflow using a single serial tool to check your packages and commit to them is not very efficient. Not only it wastes your time and slows you down — it discourages you from splitting your changes into more atomic commits.

Upon hearing the pkgcheck advocacy, many developers ask whether it can commit for you. It won’t do that, that’s not its purpose. Not only it’s waste of time to implement that — it would actually make it a worse tool. With its parallel engine pkgcheck really shines when dealing with multiple packages — forcing it to work on one package is a waste of its potential.

Rather than trying to proliferate your bad old habits, you should learn how to use git and pkgcheck efficiently. This post aims to give you a few advices.

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new* helpers can read from stdin

Did you know that new* helpers can read from stdin? Well, now you know! So instead of writing to a temporary file you can install your inline text straight to the destination:

src_install() {
  # old code
  cat <<-EOF >"${T}"/mywrapper || die
    #!/bin/sh
    exec do-something --with-some-argument
  EOF
  dobin "${T}"/mywrapper

  # replacement
  newbin - mywrapper <<-EOF
    #!/bin/sh
    exec do-something --with-some-argument
  EOF
}

Inlining path_exists

The path_exists function in eutils was meant as a simple hack to check for existence of files matching a wildcard. However, it was kinda ugly and never became used widely. At this very moment, it is used correctly in three packages, semi-correctly in one package and totally misused in two packages. Therefore, I think it’s time to replace it with something nicer.

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