Re: [gentoo-dev] www-client/chromium gtk3 support

[Alan McKinnon]

On 10/09/2015 14:44, Rich Freeman wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 10, 2015 at 8:33 AM, hasufell <hasufell@g.o> wrote:
>>
>> So this makes no sense, since it's already an unsupported corner case.
>
> Just what use of Gentoo do you not consider an unsupported corner
> case, which isn't already better supported by some other distro?
>
> The whole point of using Gentoo is having "support" for all those
> "unsupported corner cases."  If you just want everything to support
> doing things in the one way which is most supportable, you're
> basically doing a really bad job at re-inventing Debian.
>
> I use quotes around support since all support on Gentoo is
> best-effort, and that is all I'm getting at here.  If a package
> maintainer can support multiple configurations and are willing to do
> so, they should be encouraged to do so.
>
>>
>>> I'm not suggesting that package maintainers should be forced to
>>> support both whenever possible.  I just don't think they should be
>>> discouraged from doing so.

+1

I'm fully with Rich here. gtk+2 is out there, it's in the tree and stuff
uses it. Therefore a way must exist for stuff to get to use it.

Everything else is whinging and nattering.

>>>
>>
>> Yes, they should be discouraged. It's a QA matter.
>>
>

Since when does QA devise policy?
QA never devises policy
QA enforces policy that by definition is devised elsewhere

> Well, I'm glad we've all aired our opinions on the matter.  :)
>
> I just fail to see the QA issue here, unless it again boils down to
> that it is easier to do QA when you have one configuration (like
> Debian) and not many (like Gentoo).
>
> The other issue that keeps coming up is that we don't have good
> standards for USE flag naming in these situations, and the solution to
> that is to come up with a good uniform practice.

Having gtk, gtk2 and gtk3 USE flags used inconsistently is a problem,
that is not being denied.

What is not a problem is a package that supports one or more toolkits,
offers various ways to implement that support, is supported upstream and
desired by users. That is a fact and as this is not Debian people need
to be willing to let people solve that problem in ways they see fit.
Citing "QA policy" as a way to avoid having to deal with murky real-life
corner cases is just flat out wrong. And those murky corner cases exist,
they always will and are the things that separate real life from
theoretical ideals.

gtk2 exists and is in use. I see no plans to deprecate it globally, so
those who take issue with ugly USE syntax really should learn to deal
with it, or propose a more elegant solution that still accomplishes what
other devs are trying to do.

-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan.mckinnon@×××××.com