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Hi |
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|
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I'd like to raise your attention on problem of in my opinion overusing IUSE |
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defaults in various packages. |
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Currently there seems to be no policy whatsoever at least advising when it's |
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appropriate to add +<useflag> and when not, so it's just up to developer's |
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taste. |
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While it usually doesn't do any particular harm (but I guess security and |
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prefix/alt team won't agree on this) - insanely enabling everything by default |
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is not the best idea in my opinion. |
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Of course we need an example. Let's have a look at latest stable media- |
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video/mplayer-1.0_rc2_p20090322 ebuild: |
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|
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IUSE="3dnow 3dnowext +a52 +aac aalib +alsa altivec +amrnb +amrwb arts +ass |
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bidi bindist bl +cddb +cdio cdparanoia -cpudetection -custom-cflags |
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-custom-cpuopts debug dga +dirac directfb doc +dts +dv dvb +dvd +dvdnav dxr3 |
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+enca +encode esd +faac +faad fbcon ftp gif ggi -gtk +iconv ipv6 jack |
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joystick jpeg kernel_linux ladspa libcaca lirc +live lzo mad md5sum +mmx |
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mmxext mng +mp2 +mp3 musepack nas +nemesi +network openal +opengl oss png pnm |
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pulseaudio pvr +quicktime radio +rar +real +rtc -samba |
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+schroedinger sdl +speex sse sse2 ssse3 svga teletext tga +theora +tremor |
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+truetype +unicode v4l v4l2 vdpau vidix +vorbis -win32codecs +X +x264 xanim |
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xinerama +xscreensaver +xv +xvid xvmc zoran" |
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|
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Personally I'd really like to hear some explanation from maintainers about the |
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reasons mplayer needs all those dependencies or why they are *really* |
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recommended for every user of *any* profile (let me remind this). |
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|
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But thats's not the point - the point is, Gentoo probably needs some policy to |
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advise, when some newly added USE flags are appropriate to be enabled by |
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default. |
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|
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I suggest as follows: |
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- When newly added USE flag makes already provided feature optional - needs to |
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be enabled by default (this is required to make package feature set somewhat |
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invariant after update) |
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- When newly added USE flag adds new feature that is considered very common |
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(that's tricky part and decision should be always made by herd, not individual |
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developer) *but* *does* *not* *pull* *any* *dependencies* - enable by default |
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- in any other case *do* *not* *enable* by default - (why? because "I use it |
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so I'll enable it by default" is not enough of an explanation) |
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|
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What's the opinion on that? I guess we need some policy or at least some |
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suggestion mentioned in devmanual - really.. |
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|
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-- |
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regards |
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MM |