Re: [gentoo-dev] is IUSE mandatory?

[Ian Leitch]

I always put IUSE at the top of my ebuilds even if it doesn't use any.
The benefit being that anyone who ventures into the ebuild can see
straight away if/what USE flags it has.
Its still very obvious the package doesn't use USE flags if IUSE isn't
in there, but I think its good to be clear/definate/organized/what ever.
The same should go for all other variables IMO, if they are unused set
them "".

Regards,
Ian. 

On Sun, 2003-11-23 at 00:37, Alastair Tse wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> I've come across a peculiar inconsistency with one tiny aspect of the
> Gentoo Development Policy which would probably bore everyone except for
> the most pedantic and anal developers.
>
> I was reading through the Gentoo Developer HOWTO (aka. Ebuild HOWTO)[1]
> as all developers should (yes, I'm looking at you ;) and found that the
> field IUSE is declared as an optional field.
>
> I've brought this up on gentoo-doc and also on bugzilla[2], but there
> doesn't seem to be any authoritative answer on whether IUSE should be
> included even if a package does not use and USE flags.
>
> From a earlier revision (1.13) of the Developer Policy, it says:
>
> IUSE : This is set to what USE variables your package uses. If your
> package uses none, you must set it to IUSE="".
>
> However, the current document states that:
>
> IUSE : OPT : This is set to whatever USE variables your package
> utilizes. Remember that KEYWORDS should not be listed in here!
>
> (where OPT = optional)
>
> Now, which one is right? Should we include IUSE="" if there are no USE
> variables being used, or should we just remove them?
>
> I don't mind either way, because adding an extra 7 characters to an
> ebuild doesn't do me or a user a great deal of harm. But it would be
> nice to be clear on what the policy should be.
>
> [1] http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/gentoo-howto.xml
> [2] http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=34131
>
> Cheers,