Re: [gentoo-dev] HDEPEND (host dependencies for cross-compilation) for EAPI 5?

[Zac Medico]

On 09/01/2012 09:00 AM, Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
> On Fri, 31 Aug 2012 18:45:59 -0700
> Zac Medico <zmedico@g.o> wrote:
>> On 08/31/2012 04:07 PM, Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
>>> On Fri, 31 Aug 2012 16:03:25 -0700
>>> Zac Medico <zmedico@g.o> wrote:
>>>>> runtime-switchable USE flags for optional dependencies o.O? It
>>>>> sounds like using a spoon to eat spaghetti to me.
>>>>
>>>> All suggested deps are not equal, so USE flags give you the
>>>> ability to pick and choose the ones that you want.
>>>
>>> So does --take / --ignore with suggested dependencies, with the
>>> added advantage that suggested packages don't end up being brought
>>> in without user request just because a user has a particular use
>>> flag enabled globally.
>>
>> If the USE flags have ambiguous meanings doesn't that mean that
>> they've been poorly named?
>
> It's not like that. It's that in practice, suggestions are mostly for a
> particular specific feature (such as git-send-email support), not for a
> general concept (such as email in general).
>
> It also defeats the point of suggestions, if they're not made visible.
> For users, suggestions should look like suggestions, and they should
> be able to see them easily.

This sounds more like a user-interface issue than a problem with
runtime-switchable USE flags (GLEP 62). The nice thing about
runtime-switchable USE flags is that makes it possible to allow users to
unify all of their optional dependency choices in their USE flag settings.

You can still implement a --take / --ignore mechanism while allowing the
use of runtime-switchable USE conditionals in SDEPEND. It's simply a
matter of ignoring the USE conditionals and instead using your --take /
--ignore mechanism to select atoms.
-- 
Thanks,
Zac