Re: [gentoo-dev] ebuild design issue regarding some {I need the lib and api only}-DEPENDs

[Brian Harring]

On Thu, Aug 18, 2005 at 11:37:05AM -0400, Chris Gianelloni wrote:
> Other distributions are also binary-only, so there's no real comparison
> here.  While I think having "client" and "server" type USE-flags is
> really a bad idea, I don't see a problem with providing a library.
>
> I 100% disagree with splitting the package into client and server, but
> don't think it would be bad to have it like this:
>
> net-libs/libmysqlclient
> dev-db/mysql
>
> You'll notice that there is no server package.  The dev-db mysql package
> should be the entire distribution.  Splitting out a separate library for
> client-only shouldn't be too bad, but I still disagree with it, for the
> most part.
Splitting it out is just as bad as breaking it into server/client 
chunks from the added QA and maintenance standpoint, thing is, in this 
case splitting out the lib *is* breaking it up into subpackages, so 
it's no better :)

Best solution in my opinon? Two use flags address this, client, and 
server.  Regardless of the setting of the two, you get the library; 
from there, you just set client and server as defaulting to on, and 
packages use dep on whatever chunk of it they need (quite likely no 
use dep in this case, since they probably only need the lib).

Better tweak to it is not the usual use.defaults addition, but 
specifying the default state of the USE flag in IUSE, as proposed by 
spanky/others.

Kind of curious about people's opinion on the IUSE default use flag 
thing, initial syntax was (using the above example)
IUSE="+client server"
with client defaulting to on unless the user's config disables it- 
note, strictly enabling from IUSE, no auto-negation.
I forgot to add this, but it's a 10 line change if people still view 
it as worthwhile.
~harring