It would be nice to allow file globbing in the DOCS array so something like the following would work as expected: DOCS=( doc/*.txt ) similar to how: DOCS="doc/*.txt" already is used in many ebuilds.
I had always thought of it as a feature: Non-array DOCS gives you globbing support, whereas specifying it as an array allows for strange filenames with embedded spaces, stars, etc.
(In reply to comment #1) > I had always thought of it as a feature: Non-array DOCS gives you globbing > support, whereas specifying it as an array allows for strange filenames with > embedded spaces, stars, etc. Sure, but certain eclasses inherit base.eclass which doesn't give you a choice.
(In reply to comment #2) > (In reply to comment #1) > > I had always thought of it as a feature: Non-array DOCS gives you globbing > > support, whereas specifying it as an array allows for strange filenames with > > embedded spaces, stars, etc. > > Sure, but certain eclasses inherit base.eclass which doesn't give you a choice. I should note that some eclasses, like the cmake-utils eclass provide backwards compatibility for non-array DOCS, but some don't.
*** Bug 459054 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
DOCS=( 'doc/*.txt' ) should it rather be. Aside from that, I think the non-array syntax shall be eventually deprecated. However, I have no idea how to perform the expansion without losing spaces...
(In reply to comment #5) > Aside from that, I think the non-array syntax shall be eventually > deprecated. We have no choice but supporting it indefinitely for existing EAPIs. And it's widely used.
I'd say the EAPI-provided doc-install function shall solve one side of this. The other is to use something like: src_install() { local DOCS=( doc/*.txt ) default } which is probably a little better since it's explicit on where the files will be found.
We have opposing goals here since bringing glob support will break whitespace and noglob character of the array. Since non-array DOCS work fine and there was no more replies in 1.5yr, I'm assuming this is a WONTFIX.