Zac Medico wrote:
> I've written a patch [1] that implements support for use.force and package.use.force as originally described by Sven Wegener [2] over a year ago.  Basically, this feature is the exact opposite of use.mask and package.use.mask.  It forces USE flags to be enabled.  The only way to disable these forced flags is to mask them via use.mask/package.use.mask or to "unforce" them in the profile stack.  Users can unforce them via /etc/portage/profile/{use.force,package.use.force} in the usual "-flag" way.
> 
> If use.force is abused, then it will make it difficult for users to disable unwanted USE flags.  Therefore, the only flags that should be forced are those that should almost certainly be enabled.  This is complementary to USE masking, which should only be used to mask flags that should almost certainly be disabled.
> 
> We've discussed this feature on the gentoo-portage-dev mailing list [3] and people have expressed a desire to have the use.force feature.  People also want a way to enable default flags via IUSE, but that is a distinctly separate feature.  Considering that we have a proposed implementation for use.force, shall we add support it now?

I read the portage-dev discussion, and I'm still not seeing how this is 
superior to make.defaults. If you want to be enabling local USE flags by 
default, this is no less of a hack than that is -- what's truly needed 
is some way to set per-package defaults.

The only valid use I can see is things like the architecture, libc, and 
so forth. And it seems like there ought to be better solutions to this 
than adding another hack on top of USE.

BTW your mail was really difficult to reply to, since it didn't have any 
line wrapping.

Thanks,
Donnie
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