[gentoo-user] Re: How to play quicktime (*.mov) videos with firefox

[Harry Putnam]

Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@×××××.com> writes:

> You have it wrong.

A not unusual state of affairs for me, I'll admit.

After several yrs on gentoo... I still don't understand fully the use
of the USE flags.

> "USE=<thing>" is supposed to add *support* for <thing>, not
> necessarily *install* something called <thing>. Whatever <thing>
> means in the context of a specific ebuild depends on what the ebuild
> is for, and different ebuilds with the same USE flag may have
> entirely different DEPEND stanzas, depending on how the package is
> written and what it needs to build/run.

But wouldn't having the gnome use flag active cause updates to pull in
stuff that may not be necessary for the one or two gnome based tools
$user wants?