Gentoo Archives: gentoo-dev

From: Maciej Mrozowski <reavertm@××××××.fm>
To: gentoo-dev@l.g.o
Subject: [gentoo-dev] Policy regarding enabling IUSE defaults application in ebuild
Date: Mon, 08 Jun 2009 20:13:36
Message-Id: 200906082212.23847.reavertm@poczta.fm
1 Hi
2
3 I'd like to raise your attention on problem of in my opinion overusing IUSE
4 defaults in various packages.
5 Currently there seems to be no policy whatsoever at least advising when it's
6 appropriate to add +<useflag> and when not, so it's just up to developer's
7 taste.
8 While it usually doesn't do any particular harm (but I guess security and
9 prefix/alt team won't agree on this) - insanely enabling everything by default
10 is not the best idea in my opinion.
11 Of course we need an example. Let's have a look at latest stable media-
12 video/mplayer-1.0_rc2_p20090322 ebuild:
13
14 IUSE="3dnow 3dnowext +a52 +aac aalib +alsa altivec +amrnb +amrwb arts +ass
15 bidi bindist bl +cddb +cdio cdparanoia -cpudetection -custom-cflags
16 -custom-cpuopts debug dga +dirac directfb doc +dts +dv dvb +dvd +dvdnav dxr3
17 +enca +encode esd +faac +faad fbcon ftp gif ggi -gtk +iconv ipv6 jack
18 joystick jpeg kernel_linux ladspa libcaca lirc +live lzo mad md5sum +mmx
19 mmxext mng +mp2 +mp3 musepack nas +nemesi +network openal +opengl oss png pnm
20 pulseaudio pvr +quicktime radio +rar +real +rtc -samba
21 +schroedinger sdl +speex sse sse2 ssse3 svga teletext tga +theora +tremor
22 +truetype +unicode v4l v4l2 vdpau vidix +vorbis -win32codecs +X +x264 xanim
23 xinerama +xscreensaver +xv +xvid xvmc zoran"
24
25 Personally I'd really like to hear some explanation from maintainers about the
26 reasons mplayer needs all those dependencies or why they are *really*
27 recommended for every user of *any* profile (let me remind this).
28
29 But thats's not the point - the point is, Gentoo probably needs some policy to
30 advise, when some newly added USE flags are appropriate to be enabled by
31 default.
32
33 I suggest as follows:
34 - When newly added USE flag makes already provided feature optional - needs to
35 be enabled by default (this is required to make package feature set somewhat
36 invariant after update)
37 - When newly added USE flag adds new feature that is considered very common
38 (that's tricky part and decision should be always made by herd, not individual
39 developer) *but* *does* *not* *pull* *any* *dependencies* - enable by default
40 - in any other case *do* *not* *enable* by default - (why? because "I use it
41 so I'll enable it by default" is not enough of an explanation)
42
43 What's the opinion on that? I guess we need some policy or at least some
44 suggestion mentioned in devmanual - really..
45
46 --
47 regards
48 MM

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