Gentoo Archives: gentoo-dev

From: Gold is Heavy <aeoo@×××××××.org>
To: gentoo-dev@××××××××××.org
Subject: [gentoo-dev] GNOME and KDE, can they play nice? was: merging gaim...
Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2001 13:38:58
Message-Id: auto-000008687249@front2.mail.megapathdsl.net
1 Hi Martin and other Gentoo Hackers,
2
3 Martin said:
4 "Try the following: Make sure gnome is in use flags, then remerge
5 gdk-pixbuf. Then make sure gnome-base/gnome-core and
6 gnome-base/gnome-libs are merged, and remerge Pan."
7
8 Ok I followed these steps, and I noticed that gnome-base/gnome-core and
9 gnome-base/gnome-libs are indeed merged on my box. (I looked in /var/db/pkg
10 to check this.) And it didn't help, but you probably knew that by now :)
11
12 Then, Martin said:
13 "You have gnome in your USE-variables (in /etc/make.conf), that's why
14 gnome-support is built. If you don't want GNOME-support, remove gnome
15 from your use-variables."
16
17 Ok, I am beginning to understand the USE flags a little better now. However
18 this brings up a serious question. What about people who want to use BOTH
19 GNOME and KDE?? Personally, I will most likely take out 'gnome' from my USE
20 flags and try again, but... There might be very valid and good reasons why
21 someone might want to run both KDE and GNOME on the same box. Possible
22 scenarios:
23
24 1. More than one person uses the box at home, and they have different
25 preferences.
26
27 2. The box is in a computer lab, and many people use it there. Again, they
28 might have different preferences.
29
30 3. Someone likes to switch between Gnome and KDE on a whim, just for the fun
31 of it.
32
33 One possible solution that I can see:
34
35 When building apps, check both KDE AND GNOME flags. If both of them are
36 defined, make the app usable in both environments. For gaim, that would mean
37 sacrificing the applet functionality, and maybe gnome bits. So, the ebuilds
38 would be sensitive to both variables and there would be 4 possible actions
39 that could be taken: a) neither KDE nor GNOME defined, b) KDE only, c) GNOME
40 only and d) usable under both KDE and GNOME.
41
42 More generally, if there are more that one desktop environment flags in USE
43 flags, then emerge/ebuild should avoid building an application that is
44 hardwired to only one desktop environment. So, this could be generalized
45 away from just KDE/Gnome distinction. This could be further generalized away
46 from even desktop environments.
47
48 How about creating a new variable called ALTERNATIVE or something like that?
49
50 Then we could say:
51
52 ALTERNATIVE="desktop_environment kde gnome"
53 ALTERNATIVE="database postgre mysql"
54 ...and so on,
55
56 and what it would mean is this: if there are ALTERNATIVE
57 desktop_environment's in place, be sensitive to that fact by NOT building
58 apps that do not work with ALL of the alternatives. If there are alternative
59 database's in use, then do NOT build apps that can only use one database and
60 not the other.
61
62 The primary use for this would probably be for DEs and maybe databases, but
63 if any other alternatives should crop up, it would be very easy to handle
64 them all with a flexible and general system.
65
66 Just an idea :).
67
68 --Leo

Replies

Subject Author
Re: [gentoo-dev] GNOME and KDE, can they play nice? was: merging gaim... Mikael Hallendal <hallski@g.o>