Re: [gentoo-dev] On the use of bash-completion use flag

[Michał Górny]

On Tue, 21 Jun 2011 16:05:59 +0200
Ulrich Mueller <ulm@g.o> wrote:

> >>>>> On Tue, 21 Jun 2011, Nguyen Thai Ngoc Duy wrote:
>
> >> --- Comment #2 from Gilles Dartiguelongue <eva@g.o>
> >> 2011-06-21 09:35:59 UTC --- Afaik, the bash-completion eclass adds
> >> the use flag only to make sure the user has bash-completion and
> >> eselect packages installed. This is imho overkill and it indeed
> >> meets the point that was made on the ml that installing one file
> >> that doesn't in itself depends on anything doesn't warrant a USE
> >> flag. Maybe the discussion should be brought to dev ML to make the
> >> situation clearer for bash-completion too.
>
> > OK let's hear from the ML. Another good thing from bash-completion
> > eclass is that it advertises bash-completion in pkg_postinst (though
> > some packages miss this). If we're OK for dev-libs/glib not to use
> > bash-completion use flag, what about the others, drop the use flag?
>
> With the flag, some additional files are installed _and_ additional
> dependencies like app-shells/bash-completion (which will pull in
> further dependencies) are required. Looks like a perfect case for a
> USE flag to me. For example, users of embedded systems may not want to
> install such additional packages.

For the additional dependency, I'd put it in some common ebuild (like
bash, or something without compiled binaries -- even better) and I'd
put the flag there.

There's no reason that a dozen of packages PDEPENDs on bash-completion.
If one decides not to use bash-completion any longer, I don't see a
reason to rebuild all those packages just to get rid of one PDEPEND
(and a single file).

-- 
Best regards,
Michał Górny