Bug 394211 – [Future EAPI] Add globbing support to the DOCS array

• Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX
• Product: Portage Development

[Description Tim Harder 2011-12-10 05:13:22 UTC]

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.

[Comment 1 Ulrich Müller 2011-12-10 09:35:37 UTC]

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.

[Comment 2 Tim Harder 2011-12-10 09:43:22 UTC]

(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.

[Comment 3 Tim Harder 2011-12-10 09:48:16 UTC]

(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.

[Comment 4 Michał Górny 2013-02-24 18:12:15 UTC]

*** Bug 459054 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Comment 5 Michał Górny 2013-02-24 18:14:45 UTC]

  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...

[Comment 6 Ulrich Müller 2013-02-24 19:47:03 UTC]

(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.

[Comment 7 Michał Górny 2013-03-28 18:10:32 UTC]

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.

[Comment 8 Michał Górny 2014-09-06 21:56:53 UTC]

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.