List Archive: gentoo-dev
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Thomas Sachau wrote:<br>
<blockquote cite="mid:4AE32CE6.6060104@g.o" type="cite">
<pre wrap="">I dont mind, if a flag is really usefull and requested by a big majority of the users. But as Gentoo
is about choice, the minority should be able to easily choose something else, e.g. by a less
heavyweight profile. If a majority of mplayer users want to be able to play audio files, i dont mind
to disable it for myself, if i dont want it. But on the other hand shouldnt a handfull of users be
able to dictate the enabled and disabled USE flags for many other users, which might have a
different interest.
</pre>
</blockquote>
<br>
Just as a stake in the ground, but personally I have two modes of
interest: a) for desktop use I just want a middle of the road profile
which enables "useful stuff", and b) I have some embedded projects
where every byte is precious<br>
<br>
<br>
<blockquote cite="mid:4AE32CE6.6060104@g.o" type="cite">
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">It would be nice if we actually documented why they were enabled. Does the
use flag enable significant functionality that would otherwise make the software
less useful.
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap=""><!---->
Documentation is always usefull. One should also check the additional overhead of the USE flag.
</pre>
</blockquote>
<br>
I often hear this general kind of commentary. Just out of interest,
how/why do you care about the byte count that much? Apart from embedded
work, or perhaps virtualised servers, I find it surprising to imagine
that "most people" find the "cost" of minimising installed size (well
more than the obvious stuff) to be worth the effort (in general)?<br>
<br>
What kind of size of install do you run? Sub 200MB? Sub 50MB? How
much "bloat" are you seeing by fiddling with changing your profile from
defaults?<br>
<br>
Personally I recently figured out how to create my own local profiles,
and this allows me to control the main USE flags to my liking.
Personally I find that minimising the number of interpreted languages
installed (perl etc) and optimising locale size is by far the dominant
factor in the size of the install. Thereafter controlling whether
mplayer also plays x264 files seems largely second order (at least on
my install)?<br>
<br>
If you are worried about security issues in dependencies then do also
look at hardened (esp. with the gcc-4.4 hardened overlay) and perhaps
grsecurity - this can very effectively mitigate the effects of many
security holes.<br>
<br>
Good luck<br>
<br>
Ed W
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