Gentoo Archives: gentoo-dev

From: Ulrich Mueller <ulm@g.o>
To: gentoo-dev@l.g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-dev] Guidelines for IUSE defaults
Date: Tue, 07 Feb 2017 07:52:55
Message-Id: 22681.31910.919088.407002@a1i15.kph.uni-mainz.de
In Reply to: [gentoo-dev] Guidelines for IUSE defaults by Michael Orlitzky
1 >>>>> On Thu, 02 Feb 2017, Michael Orlitzky wrote:
2
3 > A bigger problem arises from #3 and #4: it's no longer simple to get
4 > a minimal system. When various USE flags default on at random, you
5 > get users doing things like USE="-*". We can tell them not to do
6 > that, because of the flags in #1, but in fact very few IUSE defaults
7 > are critical, and most of them are junk. The only way to turn off
8 > all the junk ones without a huge waste of time is USE="-*".
9
10 > Can we discourage IUSE defaults except for #1 and #2? I'm equally
11 > guilty of #3 and #4, but I now regret them. I would also like to see
12 > explanations in metadata.xml of why +flags are on by default.
13
14 [Late to the topic, but two devs have asked me on IRC that I should
15 post this, in order to have it documented as part of the thread.]
16
17 I see no point in discouraging IUSE defaults, given that they are
18 purely advisory for the package manager:
19
20 "[...] any use flag name in IUSE may be prefixed by at most one of a
21 plus or a minus sign. If such a prefix is present, the package manager
22 may use it as a suggestion as to the default value of the use flag if
23 no other configuration overrides it." [1]
24
25 Portage can be made to ignore IUSE defaults by omitting "pkginternal"
26 from USE_ORDER, i.e. by adding the following line to make.conf [2]:
27
28 #USE_ORDER="env:pkg:conf:defaults:pkginternal:repo:env.d"
29 USE_ORDER="env:pkg:conf:defaults:repo:env.d"
30
31 One could even think about adding this to a future minimal profile.
32
33 Ulrich
34
35 [1] https://projects.gentoo.org/pms/6/pms.html#x1-670007.3
36 [2] make.conf(5) (in particular, note the warning for USE_ORDER)

Replies

Subject Author
Re: [gentoo-dev] Guidelines for IUSE defaults Kent Fredric <kentnl@g.o>
Re: [gentoo-dev] Guidelines for IUSE defaults Michael Orlitzky <mjo@g.o>