Gentoo Archives: gentoo-dev

From: Gilles Dartiguelongue <eva@g.o>
To: gentoo-dev@l.g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-dev] introspection use flag
Date: Fri, 06 May 2011 13:31:49
Message-Id: 1304688627.4741.7.camel@gdartigu.lan.rep.sj
In Reply to: Re: [gentoo-dev] introspection use flag by Marijn
1 Le vendredi 06 mai 2011 à 15:18 +0200, Marijn a écrit :
2 > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
3 > Hash: SHA1
4 >
5 > On 05/06/11 14:25, Gilles Dartiguelongue wrote:
6 > > Le vendredi 06 mai 2011 à 10:40 +0200, Marijn a écrit :
7 > >> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
8 > >> Hash: SHA1
9 > >>
10 > >> Dear all,
11 > >>
12 > >> I was just looking into the meaning of the introspection use-flag and
13 > >> there are many ebuilds that use it so perhaps it should be globalized,
14 > >> which would also give us a chance to improve the naming/description.
15 > >> Current descriptions are:
16 > >>
17 > >> Use dev-libs/gobject-introspection for introspection
18 > >> Enable GObject introspection.
19 > >>
20 > >> Currently it is hard to tell which functionality is enabled through this
21 > >> flag and the meaning of the descriptions for when the flag is off are
22 > >> even more unclear. Does it mean that introspection will not be used or
23 > >> will some other way of introspection be used? Either way, perhaps the
24 > >> people in the know could shed some light on this issue?
25 > >>
26 > >> Thanks,
27 > >>
28 > >> Marijn
29 > >
30 > > See original thread on this mailing list:
31 > >
32 > > From: Arun Raghavan <ford_prefect@g.o>
33 > > Subject: [gentoo-dev] New global USE flag: introspection
34 > > Date: Sun, 20 Jun 2010 20:12:58 +0530 (20/06/2010 16:42:58)
35 > > Message-ID:
36 > > <AANLkTimjJIGW6k5vQCX-wryeYy_FPUTQpRN7jmW4xRKN@××××××××××.com>
37 > >
38 >
39 > Thanks for the pointer![1] Having just read that discussion it seems
40 > that even back then many developers found that the name "introspection"
41 > is too broad/imprecise. Several alternatives were proposed, like
42 > gintrospection, gobject-introspection, gir, api-introspection. I think
43 > any of these would have been better than the current name.
44
45 The gnome team agreed to disagree. There is no point in renaming a flag
46 that is widely used across gnome packages for a single common purpose
47 and not anywhere else in the tree.
48
49 All alternatives are based on a what-if but months later, what-ifs are
50 still nowhere to be found.
51
52 > And what happened to the proposed description:
53 >
54 > introspection: Add gobject-introspection support, allowing for the
55 > dynamic generation of bindings for various languages
56 >
57 > which at least contains a hint of what the purpose is of this flag? But
58 > maybe someone can do even better than that now that this technology has
59 > been in use for a while?
60
61 That can be applied, it would of course be easier to manage if the flag
62 was global.
63
64 --
65 Gilles Dartiguelongue <eva@g.o>
66 Gentoo