Re: [gentoo-dev] RFC: per-package default USE flags

[Brian Harring]

On Sun, Oct 15, 2006 at 08:37:48PM +0100, Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
> On Sun, 15 Oct 2006 12:27:20 -0700 Brian Harring <ferringb@×××××.com>
> wrote:
> | Ebuilds already have a boatload of duplication;
>
> They have no duplication related to whether a USE flag is enabled.

...Because until up until now, THEY DIDN'T SPECIFY IF A USE FLAG WAS 
ENABLED.

It's a stupid statement, not providing any further backing for your 
position; please dear god spare us all the waste of time reading 
your emails if that's how you're going to push for what you want...


> | bit of a red herring
> | however complaining about a single char in IUSE to indicate a flag
> | defaults to on (seriously, you're bitching about 5 chars of wasted
> | space for a single flag forced on, switch to a better arguement).
>
> It's not a question of space. It's a question of maintainability.

Your proposal is using profiles.  Ok, so for any overlay that is going 
to use default IUSE, they now have to bundle their own profile (and 
maintain said profile).

Further, since portage (the official manager) supports *one*, and only 
*one* profile, the user has to specify their own high level profile 
pulling in their desired profile, and intermixing all base profiles 
from their overlays.  This is regardless of whether that default use 
flag is applicable to *all* repos, like it or not, it's forced on via 
your proposal.

Goes without saying, they have to maintain that themselves, further, 
due to the forced intermixing of disparate profiles, gentoo devs now 
get the fun of having to dig through nonstandard profile combinations 
(errant bashrcs can do *lots* of fun things).

Further fodder against this daft arguement is just pointing out the 
(thus ignored) "and what happens when the user goes to copy an ebuild 
into another repo?".

Or... extend IUSE to support a prefixed '+' in front of a use flag.  
Simple enough, nothing complex, no forced hoops to jump through to 
make it work.

Either I'm hitting the pipe pretty damn hard, or default IUSE is the 
simplest solution here, with nill maintainance cost.

What are we all missing here?

Nearest I can figure, you're pressing hard for the view that all USE 
flags must come from profiles (by extension user configuration); 
provide some reasoning behind that implicit assumption please, rather 
then stating it as fact.

~harring