Re: [gentoo-alt] Names of Prefix variants

[Ruud Koolen]

Okay, this thread has been going nowhere for too long, and it's blocking 
progress. It's time to make a decision and be done with it.

I hereby christen the two variants of gentoo prefix "prefix guest" for the 
variant that has nongentoo include and library search paths and a nongentoo 
dynamic linker; and "prefix standalone" for which the dynamic linker and all 
search paths are strictly inside the prefix installation.

I will introduce a single new USE flag, masked in nonprefix profiles and 
forced in prefix guest profiles, "prefix-guest"; this USE flag with codify 
exactly the two properties specified above. I have decided not to use a 
second USE flag for the alternative after all; a look through the tree has 
shown that this would be useful at exactly one place (toolchain.eclass) and 
nowhere else, and at that point it's just a waste of complexity.

I will not use a USE_EXPAND variable, because there isn't really a (relevant) 
single setting that can take on multiple values across different prefix 
variants; rather, there is just the single deviation from normal gentoo 
system setups which may or may not apply to a given prefix variant, so a 
simple USE flag saying "this 'feature' is in effect" is the appropriate tool 
for the job.

I will create profiles default/linux/$arch/13.0/prefix/{guest,standalone}, of 
which the first is a link to prefix/linux/$arch and the second is the new 
profile to be written. I will not for now name either the "default" prefix 
profile on linux archs per the name default/linux/$arch/13.0/prefix, as I 
think that choice is best delayed until after we have more experience with 
how well the two variants work in practice; naming one the default is easy, 
but changing this decision later on is hard without breaking compatibility. 
Thus, for now default/linux/$arch/13.0/prefix will stay empty.

I will create a common base for the two variant profiles in features/prefix, 
with both variant profiles inheriting it. After all, the majority of profile 
hacks in the current prefix profiles would apply in full force in 
prefix-standalone.

Unless there are any complaints, I'm planning to make all this a reality in a 
few days.

Thoughts?

-- Ruud