Re: [gentoo-user] Re: This nite's switch to "full multilib"

[Fernando Rodriguez]

On Monday, March 30, 2015 9:09:14 PM Alan McKinnon wrote:
> On 30/03/2015 15:04, Holger Hoffstätte wrote:
> > On Mon, 30 Mar 2015 13:44:59 +0100, Neil Bothwick wrote:
> >
> >> On Mon, 30 Mar 2015 12:15:01 +0000 (UTC), Holger Hoffstätte wrote:
> >>
> >>>> Portage does not override your choices, and it certainly does not
> >>>> allow one single ebuild to automagically change the behaviour of
> >>>> multiple other ebuilds. The correct way to bring about changes in
> >>>> behaviour is to add your global choices to make.conf (which is
> >>>> outside the control of the tree), or to add your explicit changes to
> >>>> package.*
> >>>
> >>> ..that just shows the root of the problem: the ABI is not handled
> >>> consistently, but rather as a per-package configuration choice.
> >>
> >> The news item also showed how to make it a global choice, avoiding the
> >> need to multiple per-package directories.
> >
> > I'm not sure that's a solution to the problem at all (which is why I
> > didn't do it on my machines either). Apart from always wasting much more
> > work & resources than necessary for no good reason it doesn't answer the
> > question what happens as soon as I want to build a package that is
> > 64-bit-only - in which case you'd end up in the same situation we have
> > now, just mirrored.
>
>
> Maybe it's time we asked the multilib devs how they intended to deal
> with these questions you raise.

I don't have a problem with the way it is, but I think something like the 
following would be nice: instead of just supporting use_flag and -use_flag you 
could add something like @use_flag (auto-use flag) that automatically builds the 
feature only if needed to satisfy a dependency. That way you're not changing 
anything with existing configuration and still got full control over it.

-- 
Fernando Rodriguez