Re: [gentoo-dev] crap use flags in the profiles

[Chris Gianelloni]

On Thu, 2005-08-25 at 00:28 -0400, Mike Frysinger wrote:
> - base doesnt define any USE
> - default-linux defines a few local xorg USE (because no one has given us the
> ability to control default USE via IUSE yet :P)
>
> {x86,amd64}/make.defaults has the 'bloated' USE because every single sub x86
> and amd64 profile had the same USE in them ... if you want to re-push them
> into subprofiles like 200[45].[01], that's fine by me ... will have to check
> with wolf/releng so they dont revert it :P

I moved them from the sub-profiles since they were redundant.

As for the profiles... the versioned profiles that you see are the ones
used by releng for each architecture to build the release.  This means
they have all of the USE flags that we want enabled for the release.
While we could create a smaller set of USE flags for the "x86" (and
amd64) profiles, then only add the huge USE list to the versioned
profiles, it wouldn't make a bit of difference, since everything we have
everywhere points the users to the versioned profiles anyway.
Basically, it would add more work for whomever maintains the profiles,
and our users wouldn't gain anything from it.  Currently, there is
nothing stopping anyone from creating a "server" sub-profile that only
had a minimal set of USE flags.  The reason why there isn't any is
because nobody is taking the time and energy to do it.  Basically, the
capability is there, but with nobody actually doing it, it tells me that
the demand isn't there.

The other thing is that any profile that shows up in the tree under
default-linux ends up being releng's responsibility, for the most part.
Can't users define their own profiles?  Why do we need to make one
ourselves?  Our profiles are "defaults", not meant to be the end-all
be-all of USE flag selection.

We've actually been talking about making the profiles more like this,
but really need to weigh the additional work required to validate them
before we go deciding that we're going to start adding profiles for
specific uses.  I tend to believe that if we start adding them, we'll
soon be bombarded with "I want a $x profile because I don't like this
one USE flag" kind of bugs.  It's much easier to say "this is our
defaults, change them as you like" than it is to provide multiple sets
of "defaults" all of which are completely arbitrary.

It would also increase the amount of work that needs to be done when the
defaults do need to be changed.

-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering - Strategic Lead/QA Manager
Games - Developer
Gentoo Linux