Re: [gentoo-dev] Guidelines for IUSE defaults

[Rich Freeman]

On Tue, Feb 7, 2017 at 8:24 PM, Sam Jorna <wraeth@g.o> wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 07, 2017 at 12:00:51PM -0500, Rich Freeman wrote:
>
>> On Tue, Feb 7, 2017 at 10:14 AM, Ian Stakenvicius <axs@g.o> wrote:
>
>> > OK, can we all decide out of this thread, that if any package is
>> > enabling critical functionality via IUSE-defaults (or rather, IUSE
>> > defaults alone), that this be addressed through package.use.force in
>> > profiles OR through removal of the flag?
>>
>> No.
>
> Can this be justified a little more?
>
> If a package is broken when a given flag is disabled, why is it not
> acceptable to not provide the flag?

Perhaps the issue is the definition of "critical functionality."

I may have interpreted it differently than intended.

If setting a flag one way or the other results in a package that has
no useful purpose then I certainly agree that this shouldn't be a flag
in the first place.  When certain combinations result in
non-functional packages these should be caught as well (via
REQUIRED_USE), though in really complex packages with many flags this
may sometimes be difficult to spot.

On the other hand, I believe it should be acceptable to use IUSE
defaults to configure a package to provide an ideal experience for the
typical user of the package, or align with upstream.  Non-upstream
patches that aren't related to integration are pushing it, but merely
providing an upstream-like default experience should be the goal for
anybody who doesn't override this one way or the other.

My brevity wasn't intended to be rude.  I've just posted extensively
enough in this thread and didn't want to just re-iterate my previous
emails, and so so above for clarity.

-- 
Rich