Bug 707824 – sys-apps/portage: support a structured configuration file format (like toml or yaml) for miscellaneous settings

• Product: Portage Development
• Status: CONFIRMED ---

[Description Zac Medico 2020-02-01 23:14:26 UTC]

A structured configuration file format would be useful for storing miscellaneous settings, so that we can avoid unnecessary pollution of make.conf with configuration variables. Something like toml or yaml would work. It should allow configuration to be split into multiple files in sub-directories, as usual for existing portage config file formats.

[Comment 1 Zac Medico 2020-02-02 03:52:47 UTC]

We'll need a a plugin framework, like the ebuild cache framework, so that people can choose practically any format.

[Comment 2 Michael 'veremitz' Everitt 2020-02-02 08:54:31 UTC]

(In reply to Zac Medico from comment #1)
> We'll need a a plugin framework, like the ebuild cache framework, so that
> people can choose practically any format.

The true test of that, however, is that you do have multiple implementations using that framework efficiently. Whilst we did see briefly a sqlite implementation (I believe, if I'm getting the right cache), I don't believe it's any better than the in-built?

I'd like to see at least a template/reference implementation of one other format in addition to the 'preferred choice' so that contributors have a good starting point to use such a framework, otherwise it's a bit of a waste of time/effort providing for it.