Re: [gentoo-dev] ssl vs openssl vs libressl vs gnutls USE flag foo

[Michał Górny]

On Tue, 27 Oct 2015 22:46:35 -0400
Rich Freeman <rich0@g.o> wrote:

> On Tue, Oct 27, 2015 at 10:06 PM, hasufell <hasufell@g.o> wrote:
> >
> > B) 1 feature flag, 3 strict provider flags
> > * ssl: enable any sort of SSL/TLS support
> > * gnutls: only to enable gnutls provided ssl support in case there
> >           is a choice
> > * openssl: only to enable openssl provided ssl support in case
> >            there is a choice (should not be implemented as !gnutls?)
> > * libressl: only to enable libressl provided ssl support in case there
> >             is a choice, must conflict with 'openssl' USE flag
> >
> > consequences:
> > * REQUIRED_USE="^^ ( openssl libressl )" is not only allowed, it is
> >   _mandatory_
> > * packages like media-video/ffmpeg _must_ switch the USE flag
> >   openssl->ssl to avoid breaking global USE flags
> > * !gnutls? ( dev-libs/openssl:0 ) will be bad form or even disallowed
> >
> > B will definitely be more work, but ofc is also a lot cleaner and
> > totally unambigous.
> >
>
> ++
>
> The pain is for a short time.  Then we have to live with this for a
> long time.  USE flags should have one meaning.  The fact that this
> isn't the case right now is already a bug.  We don't need to
> perpetuate it.

No, the pain is neverending. You define a number of flags which are
scattered all over the place and there's practically no good value but
the 'default'.

We have no way of saying 'I prefer polarssl, then gnutls, then
libressl, and never openssl'. Whatever I put in USE, I'm going to hit
one kind of REQUIRED_USE issues, or other. And in the end, I end up
having huge package.use just to make things work.

How is that a 'short time' pain?

-- 
Best regards,
Michał Górny
<http://dev.gentoo.org/~mgorny/>