On 08/03/2017 06:33 PM, Ulrich Mueller wrote: >>>>>> On Thu, 3 Aug 2017, Michael Orlitzky wrote: > >> The developer handbook that I just said didn't mention variables in >> HOMEPAGE at all. > > It did, even back in 2004: > https://sources.gentoo.org/cgi-bin/viewvc.cgi/gentoo/xml/htdocs/proj/en/devrel/handbook/hb-guide-ebuild.xml?hideattic=0&revision=1.10&view=markup#l534 >
You got me, but now we can see where that text came from and it proves my original point that the last line was added as an afterthought and isn't any sort of policy: https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=73272 Which is good, because it's a silly rule, and hundreds of ebuilds in the tree wisely ignore it. Why single out HOMEPAGE? I might like to copy/paste the econf arguments, so should we forbid the use of $(use_enable foo) and force everyone to use "if" statements? Of course not; if you need the value of HOMEPAGE (or anything else), there are more intelligent ways to get it than opening up the ebuild, digging though the source code, and manually performing the variable substitutions that the programming language is there to do for us. Use the metadata, use eix, use emerge --search, write an echo statement into the ebuild, whatever. Don't handicap everyone so that you can treat their source code as part of your user interface.
