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Thomas Sachau wrote: |
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> I dont mind, if a flag is really usefull and requested by a big majority of the users. But as Gentoo |
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> is about choice, the minority should be able to easily choose something else, e.g. by a less |
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> heavyweight profile. If a majority of mplayer users want to be able to play audio files, i dont mind |
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> to disable it for myself, if i dont want it. But on the other hand shouldnt a handfull of users be |
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> able to dictate the enabled and disabled USE flags for many other users, which might have a |
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> different interest. |
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> |
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Just as a stake in the ground, but personally I have two modes of |
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interest: a) for desktop use I just want a middle of the road profile |
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which enables "useful stuff", and b) I have some embedded projects where |
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every byte is precious |
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>> It would be nice if we actually documented why they were enabled. Does the |
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>> use flag enable significant functionality that would otherwise make the software |
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>> less useful. |
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>> |
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> |
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> Documentation is always usefull. One should also check the additional overhead of the USE flag. |
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> |
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I often hear this general kind of commentary. Just out of interest, |
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how/why do you care about the byte count that much? Apart from embedded |
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work, or perhaps virtualised servers, I find it surprising to imagine |
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that "most people" find the "cost" of minimising installed size (well |
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more than the obvious stuff) to be worth the effort (in general)? |
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What kind of size of install do you run? Sub 200MB? Sub 50MB? How much |
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"bloat" are you seeing by fiddling with changing your profile from defaults? |
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Personally I recently figured out how to create my own local profiles, |
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and this allows me to control the main USE flags to my liking. |
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Personally I find that minimising the number of interpreted languages |
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installed (perl etc) and optimising locale size is by far the dominant |
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factor in the size of the install. Thereafter controlling whether |
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mplayer also plays x264 files seems largely second order (at least on my |
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install)? |
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If you are worried about security issues in dependencies then do also |
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look at hardened (esp. with the gcc-4.4 hardened overlay) and perhaps |
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grsecurity - this can very effectively mitigate the effects of many |
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security holes. |
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Good luck |
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Ed W |
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