On Tuesday, 20 January 2026 04:20:13 EST, Eli Schwartz wrote: > Sure, I'm just replying regarding my dislike of the idea that someone > who wants an error message would recommend uncleanly aborting. ;)
This would be in the class of errors like std::logic_error from C++: i.e., the programmer made a mistake in their code. I don't care if the front falls off in this case since a mistake of this type would be noticed and corrected by an ebuild author while testing their ebuild, long before the ebuild ever hits any users. The other class of errors, which are like std::runtime_error, arise from conditions that the programmer has no control over, which are not due to incorrect code. For that class of errors, yes, I would insist on the full suite of Portage's prettiness because such errors are likely to occur on users' systems. You will note, I *did* say "at least." That left the door wide open for more elaborate error handling. I only wanted to make sure that the thing would noisily blow up rather than quietly generating a file name lacking a unique identifier. The minimum possible demand is more likely to be fulfilled.
