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

[Nikos Chantziaras]

On 02/08/2010 01:39 PM, Samuli Suominen wrote:
> On 02/08/2010 01:30 PM, Tomáš Chvátal wrote:
>> Dne 8.2.2010 12:15, Nikos Chantziaras napsal(a):
>>> 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.
>>
>>
>> Sounds sane. For correct usage lately the mplayer ebuild was rewritten
>> this way.
>>
>> Might be good idea to open tracker for these and all bugs cced to it. So
>> interested persons can fix it.
>>
>> Note for maintainers: qa bugs are considered as issue when adding new
>> packages. In longer perspective it is good to have them fixed, but you
>> don't have to proactively fix old packages. Writing this before people
>> starts complaining we are again filling lots of bugs.
>>
>> @qa: any objections against me opening the tracker?
>>
>> To sum up the issue:
>> use X wrap all other widget useflags if there is CLI interface
>> available, so if user don't want X usage for package he just set -X and
>> rest widget flags don't matter at all.
>>
>> Tomas
>
> IMHO. USE="X" is for controlling X.org dependencies, not for avoiding
> everything that deps on them, so I disagree.

I was under the impression that USE flags are for enabling/disabling 
features, not for controlling deps.  DEPEND and RDEPEND is, AFAIK, the 
way to control deps.