Re: [gentoo-dev] [RFC] Required Features for $package_manager to Aid... Development!

[Brian Harring]

On Wed, Sep 06, 2006 at 10:29:11AM +0000, Elfyn McBratney wrote:
> Hola,
>
> I've been inspired by the local/global USE flag threads recently
> posted by Doug (Cardoe), and it got me to thinking... I've recently
> joined the pkgcore development effort, and was asked by Brian
> (ferringb) what I'd like to hack on/what my niggles with portage are.
> My personal one is why updates/ and binpkg mangling takes so long in
> portage-$current.  But I'd like to know, what are everyone elses?
>
> I know that this topic have been rehashed since the dawn of
> time^Wgentoo-dev, but these things get lost, opinions change... and
> since last year, new and viable alternate package managers have
> cropped up.  So, basically I'd like to ask all on this list: - what
> package manager features would make *your* life easier?
>
> Personally, I'd like to see the following groups of changes happen one
> way or another:
>
> * Improve QA with/by:
>  - Detecting conflicting USE flags;

That one is on the map for trying to address via eapi=1; intention was 
to resurrect the approach of using a seperate metadata key, and 
extending depset support to include xor so that representing the 
_valid_ use conditional states is possible.

Simple example, if you need mysql or postgres, but not both;
VALID_USE_STATES="^ ( mysql postgres )"

if it's not required to have them enabled, but still need one or the 
other if enabled
VALID_USE_STATES="( || ( mysql postgres ) ^ ( mysql postgres ) )"

Would need to extend depset in this case to support negation of blocks 
also (nand/nor); downside, it gets verbose.

Upshot, it uses extisting syntax folks are familar with; the verbosity 
of it would also go down if/when use groups were implemented thus 
replacing USE_EXPAND (something that needs resurrecting and is another 
bit on the map, although not guranteed to be targeted).

~harring