[gentoo-dev] Re: USE flag documentation

[Ryan Hill]

Mark Loeser wrote:
> Here is a newer revision of the GLEP.  I still have multiple methods of
> solving this problem (mostly because I want and *need* input from people
> as to what they would prefer).  Please tell me what you would want to
> use so I can come up with a more precise specification.  What exactly do
> we need this system to do that we can't do now?  Is overriding the USE
> flag with use.local.desc sufficient and we just need to document the
> current solution properly?
>
> Please...let me know how you feel about this.
>
> http://dev.gentoo.org/~halcy0n/gleps/glep-0054.html
>
> Thanks,

What do people think of this?

a) Keep use.desc as it is:  a list of common flags and a short general 
description of their meaning.

b) Keep use.local.desc as it is: a list of per-package flags that are specific 
to one to a few ebuilds (i think 5 is the number though i think 10 is more 
appropriate, but that's not relevant to this discussion).  Again, each has a 
short description.

c) Allow flags from use.desc to also exist in use.local.desc.  In the case that 
a flag for a package exists in both, the use.local.desc description overrides 
the use.desc one.  This allows a more specific per-package description of global 
flags.

d) Allow long descriptions in a package's metadata.xml, as some have begun to do 
already, for cases where more info is needed.  For example I'd like to explain 
exactly what the bindist flag on freetype does and what legal implications 
disabling it can have.

The reason I suggest we do it this way is it's very close to what we're already 
doing now.  The only thing we'd need to do is decide it's okay to do (c) and 
adapt our various utils to use the use.local.desc description when both exist. 
I actually planned on proposing something like this about a year ago but never 
got around to it.  But at the time I did some poking and found that several of 
our utils already did the right thing while the others needed minor adjustments 
(I think I had a one-line patch for equery).  We also needn't worry about 
breaking 3rd party tools.  The worst that would happen is they'd display the 
use.desc description, which is what they do now.

On the other hand, if there are any far-reaching changes we need made to the USE 
flag system - any features we wish we had or misfeatures we wish we didn't - now 
would be a good time to address them.


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