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On Thu, 2014-02-20 at 10:26 +0100, Ulrich Mueller wrote: |
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> >>>>> On Thu, 20 Feb 2014, Alexandre Rostovtsev wrote: |
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> |
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> > Unfortunately, at the same time, lots of other developers are going |
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> > to start adding support for building against gtk2 XOR gtk3. Because |
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> > of course "Gentoo is about choice", and the more choices, the |
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> > merrier, and the gtk3 flag has been declared as supported by the QA |
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> > team. And that means lots of REQUIRED_USE="^^ ( gtk gtk3 )". |
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> |
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> No, in most cases REQUIRED_USE would be against policy. The actual |
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> policy is to "pick one of the USE flags in conflict to favour and |
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> should alert the user that a particular flag is being used instead", |
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> see the devmanual: |
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> http://devmanual.gentoo.org/general-concepts/use-flags/index.html |
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> |
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> > For the gnome team this results in a headache: maintaining a big |
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> > list of "-gtk" / "-gtk3" entries in |
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> > targets/desktop/gnome/package.use so that gnome users get a sensible |
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> > choice and don't need to edit /etc/portage/* just to emerge widely |
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> > used desktop tools. |
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> |
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> Right, and that's exactly the reason why REQUIRED_USE should not be |
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> used, except where it's forced be reverse USE dependencies. Quoting |
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> the devmanual again: |
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> "Note: In order to avoid forcing users to micro-manage flags too much, |
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> REQUIRED_USE should be used sparingly. Follow the normal policy |
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> whenever it is possible to do a build that will presumably suit the |
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> user's needs." |
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> |
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> Ulrich |
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|
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I see. So you want USE="gtk gtk3" to mean the same thing that gnome team |
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had intended USE="gtk" to mean, which is to say, "pick whichever gtk |
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version that is the most sensible". |
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|
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That could work. There are already a few ebuilds, e.g. audacious, with |
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REQUIRED_USE="^^ ( gtk gtk3 )" - so before this unfortunate practice |
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spreads further, the gnome team would need to note on the wiki to make |
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sure other developers know why this is especially undesirable for the |
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gtk/gtk3 flag pair. |
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|
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The other unfortunate aspect of the gtk3 flag is that it encourages |
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using flags instead of slotting for libraries that can support both gtk |
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and gtk3, resulting in needless rebuilds of when one of the flags is |
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switched on/off. But again, that could be addressed with a bit of |
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documentation. |
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