Currently, if an ebuild needs to optionally depend on a python interpreter with some specific USE flag set, one needs to use something the following syntax: PYTHON_DEPEND="python? 2:2.6" PYTHON_USE_WITH="threads" PYTHON_USE_WITH_OPT="python" In other words, one is forced to specify the fact that the python dependency is controlled by USE=python in two places - both in PYTHON_DEPEND and in PYTHON_USE_WITH_OPT. I suggest that the python.eclass be modified to make this redundancy unnecessary, so that the following construct would add a python[threads] dependency only if USE=python: PYTHON_DEPEND="python? 2:2.6" PYTHON_USE_WITH="threads" (See bug #398949 for background.)
PYTHON_USE_WITH* variables are broken by design and should be killed. In Progress Overlay in EAPI="4" + PYTHON_ECLASS_API="1" and EAPI="4-python", PYTHON_DEPEND is used to specify both USE conditionals and USE dependencies, without limitations of PYTHON_USE_WITH* and the old syntax of PYTHON_DEPEND. Read SPECIFICATION OF DEPENDENCIES section in: http://people.apache.org/~Arfrever/Gentoo_Python_Supplementary_Guide_for_Developers (If you want additional help in learning of the new syntax, then you can ask for help in #gentoo-progress IRC channel.)
No new features will be added to python.eclass, so closing as WONTFIX.
