Re: [gentoo-dev] RFC: optinal run time dependencies

[Michał Górny]

After some thinking, I'd like to re-state the USE_EXPAND variant
as having the following advantages:

1) backwards compatible -- we can make the new feature optional for
older EAPIs, making it useful for older ebuilds as well. If a PM
doesn't support it, it will just treat them as ordinary USE;

2) almost no new learning for users -- as users set flags now, they can
set optional deps;

3) dep (or dep groups) would be named by features and not only package
names,

4) easy grouping of optional dependencies -- if a particular feature
requires more than one optional package,

5) ability to use existing infra -- REQUIRED_USE, metadata.xml for
descriptions.

-- 
Best regards,
Michał Górny