Re: [gentoo-dev] QA bikeshed: killing USE=dedicated in favor of uniform USE=client+server

[hasufell]

On 08/20/2015 07:42 PM, Michał Górny wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Right now, a number of game packages are using USE=dedicated to control
> 'installing a dedicated game server only'. Aside to that, some game
> packages also have USE=server that controls building the server itself.
> Non-game package use USE=client and USE=server.
>
> In order to improve uniformity of USE flags across different packages,
> the QA team would like to deprecate USE=dedicated and use USE=client
> and USE=server as appropriate.
>
> The problems I see with USE=dedicated are:
>
> - it is game-specific. The term 'dedicated server' is not used amongst
>   other server/client model packages.
>
> - It uses negative logic. Instead of enabling something, it disables
>   client. Pretty much 'dedicated' == 'noclient'. Negative logic is
>   confusing.
>
> - In packages having USE=server as well, it can lead to really absurd
>   combinations, like what does 'USE=dedicated -server' mean? Will it
>   build no executables at all? If we add REQUIRED_USE='dedicated?
>   ( server )', this gets quite unfriendly.
>
> As an alternative, we would use USE=client and USE=server along with
> proper IUSE defaults to control client & server builds appropriately.
> Both flags use positive logic, and REQUIRED_USE='|| ( client server )'
> is rather clear.
>
> Does anyone see any real problems with that?
>

That increases the burden of managing configuration and further abuses
REQUIRED_USE where it wasn't meant to be used in the first place.

USE="dedicated" has worked fine for games users and no one has ever
complained. In fact, it is a _very_ convenient USE flag, which means "no
manual fiddling, this will be dedicated for sure".

-1