David Juhl posted on Sun, 30 Aug 2009 10:59:23 -0500 as excerpted:

> Is there a simpler way to find out the use flags for a complete desktop
> environment?  I have gnome working.  But what I can't answer is what I
> don't have working.  I wouldn't know where to begin to look.  Maybe I am
> missing something due to my ignorance...  Maybe it doesn't matter
> because what I have works...  Maybe it does because I can do something
> in the gui as opposed to the cli...
> 
> If someone could give me some thoughts on the matter it'd be greatly
> appreciated.

Well, it all depends on what your definition of "complete" is. =:^)

Generally speaking, if you're using a desktop profile, all the most sane 
USE flags you need are set there by default.  Where individual packages 
differ from the norm, there's per-package USE flag defaults now, and the 
Gentoo package again decides what's the most sane setting for most users, 
and sets the defaults accordingly.  Of course, the defaults don't apply 
if you've set the USE flag yourself, overruling them. either globally, or 
in package.use for individual packages.  But the defaults should be sane 
for someone who doesn't want to be bothered by too much detail.

If your definition of "complete" is "every feature possible", or if 
you're a detail person, or a control freak when it comes to what's 
running on your computer (as I most certainly am), the defaults aren't 
going to satisfy you.  Of course, the "every feature possible" bit is 
generally fairly easy, just check your emerge --verbose --pretend output, 
and enable nearly everything (except for the few no-feature type flags) 
you see in make.conf.

If you're a control freak or detail person, euse, from the gentoolkit 
package, is very helpful.  Again, check the output of emerge --pretend
--verbose, and for new packages or whenever a flag change comes up, check 
it.  If you don't know what that USE flag does, a quick euse -i <flag> 
gives you the descriptions, both global and per-package, if they exist, 
along with whether the flag is enabled and where it's set (profile 
default, make.conf, etc).

Of course, the /really/ detail oriented control freaks won't be satisfied 
with that either, as the USE flag descriptions tend to be rather vague, 
particularly in regard to how individual packages use them.  These types 
of people will be grepping the ebuild itself for this information, seeing 
whether it simply turns on dependencies for other packages, or does 
something else.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman