Re: [gentoo-dev] Add more local USE flags

[Samuli Suominen]

On 03/18/2010 02:39 PM, Dmitry Bashkatov wrote:
> Hello, gentoo devs! I have a little story about USE flags.
> Almost every package in gentoo has USE flags. Many of them have clear
> meaning. For example: <doc> builds package documentation, <qt> or
> <gtk> build GUI frontend. Meaning of this flags is one for all
> packages in portage. And this is described in use.desc file. But there
> are many USE flags with fuzzy meaning. For example <java> USE flag of
> package net-print/cups. What does it mean? Description file says "java
> - Adds support for Java". But what kind of support is it? Build Java
> bindings or build some optional tools written on Java? <python> flag —
> "Adds support/bindings for the Python language" also doesn't asks on
> my question about kind of support. Only ways to find out answer are
> read ebuild and "./configure --help" or use other sources of
> information like google. But this takes time. Very very many time when
> installing system first time. Also this work already done by package
> maintainer and there is no reason to repeat this for every user.
>
> My suggestion is to take out all this per package USE flag vagueness
> to use.local.desc file, so you can use
> $ equery uses net-print/cups
> + + java   : build java printing web-application
> + + python : build python bindings to libcups
> This is only example, I really don't know what this flags mean here. =)
> Another my suggestion is to extend ebuild format so package maintainer
> can easily add use flag description.
>
> What can you say about this? May be this is my delirium? And may be
> only my gentooic brain need this sort of information about USE flags.
>

This is already supported by metadata.xml local use flags, you can add
extended information as local use flag in addition to global use flag.

So I take this as a friendly reminder that maintainers should start
using the feature.

-Samuli