[gentoo-dev] best way to use profiles and package.use.mask?

[Steve Dibb]

Okay, this is something that I've wondered about for a while, but need 
to ask -- what is the best way (do we even have a policy) for using 
package.use.mask in profiles?

A couple of specific questions:

If I need to mask a use flag because of use flag dependencies that won't 
work on a particular arch, do I need to contact the arch teams to modify 
their package.use.mask profile?  If the answer is yes, I can see that as 
a huge blocker since I'd have to wait on the arches to do something 
before I can even put an ebuild in the tree.  I realize this is a 
per-arch question depending on how each one might respond, but a common 
consensus would be good.

Are there ever any cases where we could just simply put the use flag as 
restricted in the global package.use.mask and then unrestrict them in 
the profiles ones if, for example, it only worked on one or a few 
arches?  Or is the best policy always to mask it on each profile?

As for a specific example, mplayer's dxr2/dxr3 use flag now pulls in a 
dependency (media-video/em8300-libraries) which is only keyworded for 
x86, ppc, and amd64.  That means I'd have to mask the use flag in alpha, 
hppa, ia64, ppc64 and sparc (according to repoman).  I could skirt the 
issue completely and just run an if statement checking if they are using 
any of those three arches, but I'd prefer to do it the right way.  And 
not piss off any arch teams in the process.

So I guess my question is, can individual ebuild devs freely edit 
package.use.mask files in profiles?

Steve