Re: [gentoo-dev] use.force support

[Alec Warner]

Sven Wegener wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 13, 2005 at 05:08:09PM -0400, Alec Warner wrote:
>
>>Sven Wegener wrote:
>>
>>
>>>use.force might not be the best name, but it's what we do with it for
>>>most of our users. Being able to -flag in /etc/portage/profile/use.force
>>>is just because /etc/portage/profile gets added to the cascaded profile
>>>chain.  Everything we add to portage that allows a profile to revert
>>>some behaviour added by parent profiles, can also be done with
>>>/etc/portage/profile and it's good that way. So, that we're able to
>>>-flag in use.force is just part of the way cascaded profiles work. It's
>>>not a feature that will be added just to support use.force. Primary
>>>reason for use.force is to have a way to activate flags even if USE="-*"
>>>is in make.conf or environment.
>>
>>How is this not just a consequence of USE="-*"...that is what this does;
>>turns off ALL use flags.  How is use.force ( or the concept thereof )
>>not breaking the 'easy' interpretation of USE="-*" because now things
>>aren't -*, they are -* + use.force things.
>>
>>It's one of those "if you use USE="-*" you should know the consequences
>>of it...kind of deals.
>
>
> There are some USE flags that must survive the -* thing and already do
> it. One of them being ARCH, which is always there. And the USE_EXPANDed
> ones, the current important being being userland_*, kernel_* and elibc_*
> which are needed for special dependencies and checks. They are not to be
> modified by users by using USE in make.conf or the environment. They
> depend on the chosen profile and should always be enabled. We're not
> talking about every day USE flags, but really special USE flags, like
> multilib, selinux or the USE_EXPANDed ones that *must* be turned on for
> the chosen profile. Don't think of them like every day USE flags that
> allow you to tweak your system, they are used to pass some information
> from profiles to the ebuilds in a way portage can easily handle it.
>
> Hm, use.must sounds bad once I think about it more.
>
> Sven
>
I'm probably a little behind here, since this has been used for a while, 
but I guess more discussion and ideas are good.

It seems like this is an abuse of USE flags, somewhat.  I guess programs 
could have support for elibc_X or elibc_Y or userland_GNU or 
userland_DARWIN/BSD but why a USE flag for these?  If they must be 
forced, force them in the environment outside of USE flag usage.  USE 
flags are for turning off optional support for programs, that is their 
overall purpose.  There isn't a use flag for kernel version, there is a 
function for that.  Why is there not a function to determine 
userland/arch/libc?

In this case I think this use.force deal will create more complexity in 
the USE flag area than help.  This is not what use flags are for ( also 
for multilib and SELINUX ).
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