Re: [gentoo-user] Portage spokes again...

[Daniel Campbell]

On Wed, Dec 21, 2016 at 10:06:00PM +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote:
> On 21/12/2016 21:51, Rich Freeman wrote:
> > On Wed, Dec 21, 2016 at 2:46 PM, Rich Freeman <rich0@g.o> wrote:
> >> On Wed, Dec 21, 2016 at 2:20 PM,  <Meino.Cramer@×××.de> wrote:
> >>
> >>> The following USE changes are necessary to proceed:
> >>>  (see "package.use" in the portage(5) man page for more details)
> >>> # required by kde-plasma/kwin-5.8.3::gentoo
> >>> # required by kde-plasma/plasma-workspace-5.8.3-r4::gentoo
> >>> # required by net-p2p/ktorrent-5.0.1::gentoo[shutdown]
> >>> # required by @selected
> >>> # required by @world (argument)
> >>>> =media-libs/mesa-12.0.1 wayland
> >>
> >>
> >> I suggest ignoring this for the moment and see if the info above
> >> resolves your systemd issues.  I'm not sure why kwin has the
> >> dependency that it does, but it looks to me like it is set up as a
> >> hard dependency that you can't avoid without modifying the ebuild.
> >> I'll see if I can figure out more.  The changes above should at least
> >> get rid of whatever is pulling in systemd.
> >>
> >> Installing wayland shouldn't actually hurt anything.  I noticed that I
> >> have it installed likely for the same reason, and it isn't like it
> >> will start running on its own. But, I'm not sure yet whether you can
> >> avoid it.
> >>
> >
> > Well, I should have just waited to reply, but here is the issue:
> > https://mail.kde.org/pipermail/release-team/2015-July/008725.html
> >
> > kwin does in fact have a non-conditional dependency on wayland, so you
> > need to install it.  It won't do anything if you don't run it, but it
> > is not possible to build kwin without wayland support.  Judging by the
> > claim in the email that it used to take 100 conditionals in the source
> > to make it optional, I doubt anybody in Gentoo will be patching this
> > anytime soon.  I guess you could always fork it if you wanted to.
> >
> > So, sorry, not what you wanted to hear, and not really what I care to
> > hear either since I don't use wayland, but at least it doesn't need to
> > be running in this case.  I wouldn't be surprised if that changes in
> > the future, but everybody knows that xorg is on borrowed time right
> > now.
> >
> > Well, if nothing else at least this splits the thread so that you can
> > reply to the systemd and the wayland issues separately...
> >
>
>
> Doesn't it strike you as curious that the 4 extra wayland packages
> consume 8.5M installed (sans size of sources in distfiles) and for 18
> months no-one has raised nary a whimper about it, whereas recall the
> giant whinge-fest a while back about a few 10s of harmless unit files
> (text), each less than one fs block?

How does a file take up less than a single FS block? An inode has to be
allocated _somewhere_, does it not?

As for the KDE <-> wayland thing, it's possible KDE users don't care
about something like that. In fact I would argue that the average person
who wants a desktop environment cares little about the dependency tree
for said environment, because they care more about their DE than what it
takes to run it. It's also an exercise in insanity, given the size of
DEs. I applaud the teams working on packaging them; it's a huge effort.

Exceptions are obviously GNOME + systemd, which caused a large upset.
If/when KDE starts requiring wayland, I expect a similar, though
somewhat smaller outcry. It'll come down to having a quality Wayland
setup that's as smooth to get up and running as Xorg.

One of the issues with wayland adoption is 1) the sheer amount of
software that'd need to be ported (there's apparently an X-compatible
mode in Wayland or something, but I've heard nothing regarding its
quality or its interoperability), 2) its structure is not exactly clear,
3) afaik there is no known compositor that supports all the features
you'd want to see in a modern display manager, and 4) writing tools
for the display server basically depends on a competent and extensible
compositor since everything goes through it first.

What I see more likely in the future for Wayland are different levels of
"rich" experience, all using a common Wayland protocol to be
mix-and-match. So someone can have a barebones system with Fluxbox (like
me), but another Wayland implementation can have all the bells and
whistles the DE crowd is used to. Who knows?

>
> For the record, openrc user here on Gentoo; systemd on Ubuntu at work
> (no feasible choice with Ubuntu)
>
> --
> Alan McKinnon
> alan.mckinnon@×××××.com
>
>