Re: [gentoo-dev] Please consider removing use.stable.mask and package.use.stable.mask

[Ian Stakenvicius]

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On 15/11/13 10:54 AM, Peter Stuge wrote:
> Matt Turner wrote:
>> I think in large part recently it's because of use.stable.mask
>> and package.use.stable.mask. These really are a nightmare for
>> users.
> ..
>> I think most of the confusion is caused by the necessity to put
>> a *stable* package atom into package.keywords to unmask a *USE*
>> flag.
>
> A lot can be learned just from the filenames:
>
> use.stable.mask package.use.stable.mask
>
> The latter indicates that this concept has no less than four
> dimensions.
>
> Let's enumerate and associate:
>
> 1. use - USE flags - no problem, Gentoo users either love USE flags
> or leave 2. stable - arch vs. ~arch - no problem, even installation
> docs describe it 3. mask - masked packages - OK, at some point
> people encounter masked packages 4. package - per-package stuff -
> like with /etc/portage/package.use
>
> How stable and mask interact with USE is absolutely unclear and
> usability of this is very close to zero.

Well, reordering this a bit:

1 - package: so this is per-package.
2 - use: so this has to do with use flags, per package
3 - stable: so this has to do with stable systems' use flags, per package
4 - mask: so this is disallowing something on stable systems' use
flags, per package.

So I don't think this is entirely unclear.

I suppose it might be a bit more clear if it was called
'package.stable.use.mask', or the ideal english version of
'stable.package.use.mask', but i think renaming it at this point
doesn't really provide that much of an advantage and definitely
doesn't change what it does.


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