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Background: I have been bitten a couple of times by ebuilds adding USE |
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flags to newer versions of the ebuild. This has caused me to break |
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things on my system when performing a package upgrade through portage. |
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Example: pam-0.77 introduced the pwdb USE flag, which wasn't used in the |
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previous ebuild. Thus when I upgraded, I rebuilt PAM without pwdb |
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support and broke the ability of the qpopper program to authenticate |
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users on my email server. The previous version of the ebuild compiled in |
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support for pwdb without a USE flag, so the flag was not set on my |
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system to be used, as I was unaware of the need for it. |
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Solution: Enable the pwdb USE flag and recompile PAM. Unfortunately, |
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the machine this broke on is a lowly Pentium 266, so compiling PAM takes |
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about 30-40 minutes. |
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Proposed feature: When doing an emerge -pv, display some indication that |
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a USE flag is changed in the new version of the ebuild. Since I always |
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run an emerge -pv to verify settings, this would help to catch the |
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situations where a USE flag has been changed between ebuilds. This |
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would serve as an indicator that I need to do some research on the |
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possible changes to functionality to the package before upgrading the |
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package. |
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Going to the 20,000 foot level I would state the requirement is that |
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portage should have the capability to track and display USE flag changes |
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between versions of ebuilds. |
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-- |
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My Gentoo stuff: http://varnerfamily.org/pvarner/gentoo |
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-- |
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