[gentoo-dev] "X" vs "gtk" USE flags

[Nikos Chantziaras]

Hello.  Please don't be too harsh if I got this wrong or if this looks 
like whining :P

A lot of ebuilds seem to ignore the "X" USE flag and instead only have 
"gtk", "qt" and the like.  This should be declared absolutely wrong, 
IMHO.  When a program provides a command-line tool and a GUI tool, and 
the GUI tool uses only one toolkit, then the USE flag should be "X". 
"gtk" vs "qt" vs "fltk" etc should be used only in cases where a program 
can be built with either of those toolkits.  When there's only one 
choice, then this doesn't make sense.  Isn't this what the "X" USE flag 
is there for in the first place?  Having a package where, say, Gtk is 
*not* optional having a "gtk" USE flag doesn't make sense.  The X tool 
of that package is optional, but Gtk is not optional for the X tool.

A Gnome user probably has "X gtk -qt" in make.conf, while a KDE user has 
"X qt -gtk" in hope to have programs that support both Gtk and Qt being 
built with the toolkit that is more native to his DE.  When a package 
has a GUI tool that is able to only use one of those toolkits, people 
who have it disabled in make.conf will get no GUI tool at all even 
though they have "X" in their USE flags.

I hope I was able to explain the problem (as I see it) correctly :P  If 
people agree with me, it might be a good idea for maintainers of 
packages that behave like that to start using "X" as the USE flag that 
controls building of the packages GUI tools.