Re: [gentoo-user] Question on my USE choiche

[Jonathan Chocron]

Le Vendredi 19 Mai 2006 09:56, Leonardo a écrit :
> Hi all,
> my first post to Gentoo lists!
> I already installed Gentoo some time ago, and want to restart
> now from zero, to see how much I've learnt in the meantime.
> My biggest doubt has always been which USE flags to use.
> I do a lot of home work with multimedia stuff (audio, video...)
> and need also a lot of scientific and programming stuff.
> Tiny spare time is used to study networking and such.
> So I put together a list of flags, that at first sight looks
> huge; here it is:
>
> USE=" cups eds emboss  foomaticdb gdbm  gnome gpm gstreamer
> imlib  libg++ libwww mad  mpeg -nptl  pdflib  spell
> truetype-fonts type1-fonts  X xml aac aalibaccessibility acpi
> alsa arts avi bitmap-fonts bidi bluetooth bonobo bzip2
> cdparanoia cdr crypt cups dbus dga dio directfb dv dvb dvd dvdr
> dvdread emacs emboss encode esd examples ffmpeg fftw flash
> fortran ftp gb gcj gif ginac gphoto2 gps gstreamer gtk gtk2
> guile hal hardened icq idn iee1394 imagemagick imap inifile
> jabber jack java javascript joistick jpeg jpeg2k kde
> kdeenablefinal kdexdeltas libcaca lirc lm_sensors matroska
> mikmod mime ming mng mmx motif mozilla mp3 msn mysql mysqli nas
> ncurses offensive ogg openal opengl osc oss pcmcia pdf perl php
> png prelude python qt quicktime readline ruby samba scanner sdl
> slang sockets socks5 sox speex spell sse sse2 ssl svg tcltk tiff
> usb truetype unicode v4l vcd vorbis wifi win32codecs wmf
> wxwindows xine xinerama xml xml2 xmms xosd xpm xprint xv xvid
> yahoo zlib"

>
> First question: is it a good starting point or is it
> excessive/unneccessary?

That's a little excessive. For example, you have cups twice.

The thing is, useflags are now cascading, and you don't seem to use that 
feature very much. For example, truetype-fonts, type1-fonts are included in 
your make.default. Hence, they are already present opn your system, there is 
no need to specify them twice.

Moreover, some of the usflags you specify are definitely local useflags. For 
example, libg++ affects only postgresql. It should not be in your make.conf, 
since it makes it very hard to read. (Moreover, libg++ is enabled by default 
in the make.defaults).

You have a typo : aalibaccessibility .

You might want to avoid putting arts in your useflags, since arts is 
definitely the worst thing that can happen to your sound system (No flamewar 
intended, even the kde devs have decided to take it out of KDE4). However, 
you'll need kdelibs to be compiled against it if you want to hear sounds in 
kde (and I mean sounds generated by kde, not sounds from amarok...)

So, to sum up, what I would do is :
1) Put USE="" and do an emerge --info to see which useflags are enabled by 
default.
2) Ask myself the question : Do I really want *any* application running on my 
computer to have feature "foo".  If the answer is no, the useflag should be 
in /et/portage/package.use
3) Organise the useflags in make.conf by theme : For example

## System
USE="alsa mmx sse sse2"
## Desktop environment :
USE="${USE} gnome kde kdeenablefinal"
...

I find this more readable than a long USE="..." list.

> If I avoid putting things in does it mean that if I add them in
> a second moment probably some of the installed stuff needs to be
> recompiled?

If you add a useflag, there should not be any problem. However, the app will 
make use of the new feature only if it has been recompiled.

If you remove a useflag, from a library for example, the apps linked to that 
library can break. You'll need to recompile the apps.

Anyway, if you change your useflag one way or the other, you should :
1) emerge --newuse --ask --verbose world
2) revdep-rebuild

> Thanks, Leo

Beware of automatic useflags :
- Portage < 2.1 (stable)
Beware that those versions of portage have automatic useflags enabled. For 
example, if you emerge mysql, the mysql uselfag will be turned on globally. 
If you unmerge it, the useflag will be turned off (except if it is mentionned 
in any of the config files).

- Portage > 2.1 (unstable, but really, works very well) does not have that 
kind of behaviour.

I hope this was clear enough,

-- Jonathan

P.S : You seem to have forgotten "nsplugins" ;)
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