Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Do we have to build gcc with fortran now?

[Alan McKinnon]

On Saturday 25 June 2011 14:46:35 justin did opine thusly:
> >> justin
> >
> > That make sense?
> >
> > Dale
> >
> > :-)  :-)
>
> Hi,
>
> as most of you do not like to have fortran enabled by default, we
> tried to find a way around. We created a virtual/fortran which
> should depend on a working fortran compiler so that only ebuilds
> which need fortran compiler will build it. With that situation it
> was possible to remove USE=fortran from the profile (btw profiles
> cannot have a version bump and don't need it) so that most of you
> could drop the fortran support from gcc except a ebuild depends on
> it.
>
> However I wasn't aware that there is no hierarchy in the
> dependencies in an ebuild and portage will choose a solution w/o a
> USE change first. That is the reason why many of you saw that ifc
> should be installed, instead of gcc with USE=fortran. That was the
> point where I added it back to the profile as a default enabled
> USE.
>
> The solution for the average user is leaving all default USE on.
> This will gcc build the fortran support and you will have no
> problem. (Libs and compiler are 1.5MB on my system)
>
> Or remove add -fortran to your make.conf and add sys-devel/gcc
> fortran to your /etc/portage/package.use.
>
> Trying to avoid any fortran at all is stupid, because as already
> mentioned many math operations are faster if programmed in fortran.

Feedback from the consumer end of the producer-consumer link :-)

The motivation is fine and well, it didn't quite work out, we call 
this a "bug".

The only real mistake was trying to slipstream it in without 
notification or warning. devs all agree we should never do this, but 
it is so ... tempting.

I've made the same mistake myself many many times, and each time it 
came back and bit me hard :-)


-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com