Re: [gentoo-dev] Possibility of overriding user defined INSTALL_MASK from an ebuild?

[Rich Freeman]

On Fri, Feb 28, 2014 at 9:44 AM, Samuli Suominen <ssuominen@g.o> wrote:
> I completely agree using INSTALL_MASK is 100% responsibility of the user
> setting it, it's like blind 'rm -f', but some people
> don't agree and keep attacking me.
> I'm using the word attacking because it's constant, relentless,
> repeating and I don't see an end to it. I believe Poly-C just
> proofed that point in this thread.
>

Honestly, that is a problem in need of a non-technical solution.

The purpose of INSTALL_MASK is for users to tell portage, "I know what
I'm doing, don't mess with this path."  Portage should do as it is
told.  If the user doesn't know what they're doing, they get to keep
the pieces.  If somebody gives you a hard time about it, there are
solutions for that.

I think using INSTALL_MASK to kill a few inodes that probably don't
even have extents using a sledgehammer to kill a fly, and if you put
some holes in your walls in the process I_TOLD_YOU_SO.  However, I
won't tell people they can't do it if they want to.  It has a lot of
uses I'd consider more productive in setting up embedded systems and
such, and in those cases having a war of escalation with overrides on
top of overrides is just a PITA.

Honestly, if we were going to do all this, the people annoyed by
systemd units will just apply the override, and you'll be right back
where you are now.

So, regardless of where you fall on the debates around FHS, install of
units without use flag, and so on, I don't think changing how
INSTALL_MASK works really makes sense.

By all means we can continue those debates and get Council votes where
appropriate.

Rich