[gentoo-amd64] Re: Seamonkey vs Mozilla: pointless cage match

[Duncan]

"Richard Fish" <bigfish@××××××××××.org> posted
7573e9640611150101h93e9cabw1fbf3927fda1bd46@××××××××××.com, excerpted
below, on  Wed, 15 Nov 2006 02:01:59 -0700:

[Excellent post, Richard.  I've a feeling some may find it worth
archiving. =8^)]

>> 3. Mozilla vs Seamonkey.  I tried Seamonkey a couple of times, and it
>>    crashed so often and so quickly that I reverted to mozilla.  Now it
>>    seems there are quite a few packages which insist on seamonkey and
>>    are not satisfied with mozilla.

> If the packages have USE flags, check them.  Something with a
> "firefox" flag might use that to prefer firefox over seamonkey.
> Something else with a "no-seamonkey" flag...well, guess what that
> does.  TIP: add --verbose --pretend to your emerge commands to see the
> USE flags and changes.  And add --tree to see what is pulling in
> seamonkey.
>
>>    Why do some packages explicitly care about seamonkey?  Shouldn't
>>    they be pretty much the same?  Shouldn't the dependencies be happy
>>    with either one?

Something I picked up from I believe the dev list, that Richard didn't
mention.  Mozilla will eventually be removed, replaced by seamonkey.  As
newer packages require features not in the older mozilla packages, they'll
specifically depend on seamonkey alone.  The mozilla USE flag is
deprecated as well, with newer packages being actively updated to the
seamonkey USE flag and dependencies.  Eventually they'll all be
dependencies on seamonkey and the mozilla packages can be removed from the
tree.

Meanwhile, as Richard suggested, there's package.provided, if you have to
use it, but be aware that it might break things who then assume the
dependencies are installed that might not be.  As long as you are aware of
it, particularly when some otherwise puzzling emerge error or another
occurs, and use common sense, it shouldn't be a big problem.  However,
again as he said, most of the time use flag management can cure the
problem, if you understand how it works in the particular case, of course
(and Richard explained that better than I could as I don't find I need any
Mozilla products ATM, konqueror suffices for me, so I'm not that familiar
with this particular case at all).

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

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