Gentoo Archives: gentoo-council

From: Brian Harring <ferringb@×××××.com>
To: Ulrich Mueller <ulm@g.o>
Cc: gentoo-dev@l.g.o, gentoo-council@l.g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-council] pkg_pretend USE validation and VALID_USE alternative
Date: Wed, 31 Mar 2010 10:48:54
Message-Id: 20100331104647.GD11663@hrair
In Reply to: Re: [gentoo-council] pkg_pretend USE validation and VALID_USE alternative by Ulrich Mueller
1 Note that while I inadvertantly cross posted (I was intending on
2 cc'ing council@g.o, not the ml), doubt they need to be cc'd
3 further- my original attention was to effectively ensure they were
4 paying aware of the details of this so that when I took it to them
5 folk were informed.
6
7 CC'ing gentoo-council so folk following it there know it moved
8 over to -dev. Your discussion of devmanual relevance needs some -dev
9 consensus anyways before the council should be deciding on it.
10
11 Also the cross posting is making betelgeuse cry anyways (and pissing
12 off my procmail setup) ;)
13
14
15 On Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 11:48:37AM +0200, Ulrich Mueller wrote:
16 > >>>>> On Wed, 31 Mar 2010, Brian Harring wrote:
17 >
18 > > Roughly, VALID_USE is a list of constraints stating what the allowed
19 > > use flag combinations are for this pkg. If you think of normal
20 > > depdencies (I must have openssl and python merged prior), it's the
21 > > same machinery.
22 >
23 > Maybe we should first discuss if we want to drop the following
24 > rule [1] which your proposal seems to contradict:
25
26 Not just my proposal- council contradicted it via even letting
27 pkg_pretend into EAPI3 (now EAPI4):
28
29 http://www.mail-archive.com/gentoo-council@l.g.o/msg00493.html
30
31
32 > | Occasionally, ebuilds will have conflicting USE flags for
33 > | functionality. Checking for them and returning an error is not a
34 > | viable solution. Instead, you must pick one of the USE flags in
35 > | conflict to favour.
36 >
37 > [1] <http://devmanual.gentoo.org/general-concepts/use-flags/>
38
39 I honestly consider the ebuild silently making decisions on the user's
40 behalf *worse*. Consider if openoffice silently made decisions like
41 that- 4 hours later it'll wind up choosing the option you didn't
42 really want and you'll be in a foul mood.
43
44 Frankly is the devmanual even relevant on at this point beyond good
45 practices btw? Last I looked through it, there was a rather unhealthy
46 mix of good policy that we follow, and policy that isn't relevant
47 anymore- in need of some cleanup at the very least.
48
49
50 ~harring