Re: [gentoo-dev] KDE, metapackages, and monolithic packages

[Petteri Räty]

Mike Myers wrote:
> Hello!
>
> Currently, as you all surely already know, KDE is currently handled with
> metapackages or monolithic packages.  The metapackages is very
> convenient for a more complete install of KDE, and the monolithic
> packages are better or a more modular install.  However, with the
> metapackages, it seems much more difficult than necessary to rebuild the
> KDE packages.  Like, say I wanted to add a user flag to support
> something I just added, like xinerama support.  With metapackages the
> way they are now, I would have to completely uninstall every single
> package and then reemerge the metapackage and it's dependencies.  Just
> simply reemerging the metapackage doesn't actually recompile anything.
> Also, if I wanted to add support for part of KDE, like say, alsa support
> for kdemultimedia, I would have to manually unemerge each individual
> package related to kdemultimedia and then reemerge the metapackage.
>
> My question is;  Is there any better way to do these kinds of things
> yet?  If not, are there any plans for making this kind of process any
> easier for the users?  I really like KDE and I'm sure there are a lot of
> other people that do as well.  I can understand the reason for going to
> metapackages, but it doesn't seem to have been as smooth of a process as
> intended.  At least not in some aspects.  I am not a developer, and I
> apologize if this has already been addressed.  I haven't seen anything
> related to this issue.  The KDE howto docs seem to assume the user is
> doing an initial install and it doesn't address if part of a metapackage
> is to be reinstalled.  It also suggests metapackages over monolithic
> packages.  I'm not really sure of the reason for such a suggestion if
> making a change to the USE flags is going to be so difficult.
>
> Maybe somebody can clear this up for me?  Again, I apologize if this has
> already been addressed.
>
> Thanks,
> Mike
>

emerge --deep --newuse --pretend world

Regards,
Petteri