Gentoo Archives: gentoo-dev

From: waltdnes@××××××××.org
To: gentoo-dev@l.g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-dev] [RFC] Global USE=gui
Date: Wed, 01 Jun 2016 17:54:04
Message-Id: 20160601175331.GA29301@waltdnes.org
In Reply to: [gentoo-dev] [RFC] Global USE=gui by Mart Raudsepp
1 On Wed, Jun 01, 2016 at 05:29:55PM +0300, Mart Raudsepp wrote
2
3 > It is meant as a feature based USE flag, as opposed to the "extra dep"
4 > based USE flags we've been using for this.
5 > There are a lot of those with USE=gtk right now. In many cases it's
6 > some little add-on graphical utility for a library, or some graphical
7 > configuration GUI in addition to command line, or some bigger cases in
8 > more modular packages that provide multiple frontends, and not all of
9 > them are graphical, but CLI or TUI (TUI meaning ncurses-based or
10 > similar).
11 > Also there are various with USE=X where it's also about that, but X
12 > isn't the only way to do GUI these days (any gtk3 app that doesn't
13 > directly use libX11/libxcb/etc themselves natively supports wayland,
14 > for example).
15 >
16 > Essentially, if it's an optional GUI, it'd be behind a USE=gui, instead
17 > of USE=gtk, USE=X, USE=qt4 or USE=qt5, when that optional GUI is
18 > available in only one toolkit version. So hence feature based flag, not
19 > dependency-based.
20
21 I see this as at least a redundancy, if not a problem. First, let's
22 look at the general case. An optional "UI" (User Interface) is also
23 selected...
24 * via the "tools" useflag 78 times in use.local.desc
25 * via the "ncurses" useflag 10 times in use.local.desc.
26 * for a lot of ebuilds via the "ncurses" useflag in use.desc (So why
27 does "ncurses" show up in use.local.desc ???)
28
29 There is no need for an additional "TUI" (Text User Interface) use flag
30 for these cases. "tools" and/or "ncurses" tells you enough. Similarly,
31 "GUI" is grab-bag of gtk2/gtk3/qt4/qt5/X/Wayland/whatever. The only
32 thing they have in common is a hard-coded dependancy on graphics libs.
33 "GUI" is an implicit dependancy of gtk2/gtk3/qt4/qt5/X/Wayland/whatever.
34 Using any of them tells you enough. What do we accomplish by requiring
35 one more USE flag? This will also make dependancy resolution of ebuilds
36 more complex, i.e. slower. Why?
37
38 --
39 Walter Dnes <waltdnes@××××××××.org>
40 I don't run "desktop environments"; I run useful applications

Replies

Subject Author
Re: [gentoo-dev] [RFC] Global USE=gui "Michał Górny" <mgorny@g.o>