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2011/3/31 Eray Aslan <eras@g.o>: |
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> On Wed, Mar 30, 2011 at 04:41:25PM -0500, Dale wrote: |
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>> +1 Some descriptions may as well not have one at all. May as well |
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>> Google the flag and the package and see what, if anything, it returns. |
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> |
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> I would say working as intended. If you do not know what a package |
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> does, chances are you don't need to enable it. And if you do want |
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> to tinker, USE flags gives you enough of a hint to start googling. |
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This has nothing to do with what you want to imply here. It's not |
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about the tech skill of the user reading the definition. It's about |
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the definitions being generic and vague enough so they can fit eight |
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thousand packages that doesn't relate in any way, right? |
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To say that the kde use flag gives "support for kde" says next to |
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nothing to me on some packages. When I look into the ebuild and/or |
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into the sources I can see all it does is to copy a .desktop file |
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somewhere, or to enable the kde file dialog, or to create a window |
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deco or a plasma snippet, or a phonon backend, or a color scheme. |
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That's what I wanted to know and there's no way I can know it by |
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looking at the USE description. |
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> Having said that, we should at least have gramatically correct |
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> English in descriptions. One might also lean towards more verbosity |
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> in end-user oriented packages (versus server/backend/toolchain |
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> packages). In any case, 10-15 words should be more than enough to |
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> explain what a USE flag does. |
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Mostly. But try cleaning the ffmpeg/libav-mplayer mess to decide which |
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codec to use and you will find that a clear explanation (so you can |
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decide) can't fit into that space. |
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I don't have a problem reading ebuilds, though having to dive into the |
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sources of a big package is another story, but I can understand users |
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that find this an unpractical "solution". After all, if the USE |
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descriptions doesn't tell a thing we should just remove them because |
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they are taking space in our portage tree to provide zero info. So, |
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"kde" flag purpose is to "enable support for KDE", oh, |
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really?[/sarcasm] |
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-- |
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Jesús Guerrero Botella |
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