Re: [gentoo-dev] Please don't use IUSE=static-libs unless really necessary

[Mike Frysinger]

On Monday, September 19, 2011 03:10:45 Michał Górny wrote:
> On Sun, 18 Sep 2011 18:39:32 -0400 Mike Frysinger wrote:
> > On Sunday, September 18, 2011 18:16:30 Nirbheek Chauhan wrote:
> > > On Mon, Sep 19, 2011 at 2:25 AM, Michał Górny wrote:
> > > > '$(use_enable static-libs static)' themselves. While at it, it
> > > > may be better to just drop the flag if no other package relies on
> > > > it and no user has ever requested the static build of that
> > > > package.
> > >
> > > I don't see any harm with including IUSE="static-libs" for every
> > > package that has working/usable static libraries[1]. Why wait for
> > > users to request it on bugzilla when it's a near-zero-cost and
> > > zero-maintenance to add it to ebuilds?
> >
> > i missed this sentence from Michał's e-mail.  unconditionally not
> > building static libraries is against policy.  if you install shared
> > libs that get linked against, then you must provide static libraries
> > unconditionally as well or support IUSE=static-libs.  maintainers do
> > not get to choose "no one has asked for it and no one in the tree is
> > using it thus my ebuild isnt going to".
>
> Where is that policy?

this policy predates much of the documentation process and is missed by the 
developer handbook.  it is however mentioned explicitly in the devmanual.

> AFAIK the policy was to 'follow upstream' which
> usually means 'shared only'. I really don't see a reason to build
> static libtorrent as upstream even doesn't support static linking.

by that token, i'll go ahead and remove glibc's static libraries since 
upstream doesn't even support static linking
-mike