In its last meeting the council has accepted an extension of the news item format which allows EAPI=5 style package dependency specifications. This has triggered a discussion if this change is backwards or forwards compatible, and what should be the new format's version number [1]. Also it is not entirely clear if the term "backwards-compatible" used in GLEP 42 correctly describes what was originally intended [2].
In any case, both portage [3] and paludis [4] will have to be updated for the new format because the change is not forwards-compatible. Therefore, we could use the opportunity to add some other features. So far, this includes: 1. Display-If-Installed: Allow EAPI=5 style package dependency specifications (see above). 2. Display-If-Profile: Allow wildcards like default-linux/* [5]. 3. Title: Increase maximum length. In the past, devs repeatedly struggled with the current 44 character limit. (Can anyone enlighten me where this originates from? I cannot find anything in the discussions around the time when GLEP 42 was submitted.) The eselect news reader could still display a 51 character title in one line for the "list" and "read" commands, on an 80 character wide terminal. I suggest we round this down to a maximum length of 50 characters, which (together with the 72 character limit for the body) would nicely agree with the limits recommended for git commit messages. 4. Content-Type: Only one value is allowed for this header, namely text/plain. We might as well drop it, because any changes there will require an increment of the News-Item-Format. If these changes find agreement, I would prepare a new GLEP for news item format 2.0. Ulrich [1] https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=568068#c4 [2] https://archives.gentoo.org/gentoo-dev/message/d30de011db9067ae3cc298de2b4ee1b2 [3] https://gitweb.gentoo.org/proj/portage.git/tree/pym/portage/news.py?id=7c94014a32d173ae61919b762140ac1c32d3b522#n273 [4] http://git.exherbo.org/paludis/paludis.git/tree/paludis/repositories/e/e_repository_news.cc?id=1684b446715907515359cd310c1e7bd93bad5a2e#n326 [5] https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=290038
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