Re: Re[2]: [gentoo-dev] Stupid USE defaults that need cleaning

[Lares Moreau]

On Mon, 2005-12-26 at 12:36 -0600, Joe McCann wrote:
>
> For the record, the eds flag was
> added as a default flag because every 3rd gnome user would file bugs or
> complain via forums because they installed gnome, found no
> evolution-data-server integration, and then be bummed when they had to
> recompile packages again. This whole thread seems to have come from a
> misunderstanding of how use.defaults work and 20 min of boredom.
>

I'm relatively ignorant of USE Flag intricacies, so please forgive me if
things don't 'fit'.

Is it feasible and or useful to have a 'meta-flag' that that enables all
the 'necessary' USE flags for a given group of packages?  So something
like USE='meta-<flagname>'. 
This has the distinction of being a meta-flag, and as such nothing
really gets turned on 'behind the users back', advanced users can look
into it and see what is being enabled by it and USE='-flag' for the
flags the users doesn't need/want, and expert users would just not use
it. This way meta packages like KDE and Gnome can have their own
meta-flag to do what the need with.

It also seems to me that more things will need to 'just work' as our
user-base becomes larger and, on average, less advanced. We could amend
the desktop guide to include something like USE='meta-gnome' to the
gnome section. And similar to other meta-flags.

This may add an unnecessary level of complexity to the use flag system,
but also may be very useful. 

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