GNOME team has been using a script for ages that creates neat lists of atoms. Sadly, the atoms it generates lack the equal sign, which makes sys-apps/portage reject them. This should obviously be fixed.
I create them manually, with the script only as a "check if I missed anything" tool. Equal sign in "Package list" is legacy compatibility and deprecated, and should not be used on new package list entries.
Oh, and of course the script obviously also appends arch columns too, so it is definitely not a neat list of atoms you could put into anything portage accepts without applying filtering first. That's been the case always with the gnome script really. So together with the per-arch filter the equal sign can be easily added in the same arch specific post-processing run. Additionally in case of the package list field, one line might be having arch specifications, another not, in the same field value. If any architecture is listed behind a pkgname-revision, then for a given arch if not listed, then that line is not applicable. But if no architecture is listed for a line, then it's applicable to all arches CC'ed. https://github.com/kensington/bugbot/blob/master/getatoms.py takes care of all this as an example code for any different script needs. And a script is needed either way, so...
