Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Trouble decrypting message from firefox ebuild

[Alan McKinnon]

On Monday 19 January 2009 18:59:36 Grant Edwards wrote:
> On 2009-01-19, Paul Hartman <paul.hartman+gentoo@×××××.com> wrote:
> > On Sun, Jan 18, 2009 at 10:32 PM, Grant Edwards <grante@××××.com> wrote:
> >> On 2009-01-18, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@×××××.com> wrote:
> >>>>>>      All the packages built against mozilla-firefox won't
> >>>>>>      compile, if after installing firefox 3.0 you get some
> >>>>>>      blockers, please add 'xulrunner' to your USE-flags.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Does anybody have idea what the above sentence is trying to say?
> >>>>>
> >>>>> It's saying that if you use firefox -3*, then you should
> >>>>> remove "firefox" from your USE and add "xulrunner" instead.
> >>>>> This way, nothing in the tree will try to pull in firefox-2*
> >>>>> (which obviously conflicts with firefox-3*).
> >>>>
> >>>> Wow.  I'm not doubting that what you say is true, but how
> >>>> anybody was supposed to get that from the emerge message is
> >>>> beyond me.
> >>>>
> >>>>> There have been 4 earlier threads on this very topic in the
> >>>>> last fortnight.  For more details, please check the recent
> >>>>> archives (rehashing the same thing over and over is getting
> >>>>> really tedious)
> >>>>
> >>>> Sort of makes you wonder if the message is a bit too cryptic,
> >>>> eh?
> >>>
> >>> If I read that message out loud, it sounds suspiciously like a
> >>> babelfish translation from Japanese to English. Whatever it
> >>> is, the author of the message is certainly not a native
> >>> English speaker.
> >>>
> >>> But the intent is easy to see if you already know how it
> >>> works.
> >>
> >> Yes, once somebody has told you the answer, it's possible to
> >> make some sense of the message. But, I stand by my assertion
> >> that give just the message very many people are going to figure
> >> out that it means you need to replace the "firefox" use flag
> >> with the "xulrunner" use flag so that apps will build against
> >> firefox-3 instead of trying to build against firefox-2.
> >
> > Someone should file a bug to have the message changed to something
> > clearer.
>
> I'd be happy to do that.  Is the following correct?
>
>   The UI and rendering libraries that were part of the
>   mozilla-firefox 2.x package have been split from the mozilla
>   firefox-3.x package and are now in the xulrunner package.  In
>   order for ebuilds to use xulrunner instead of mozilla-firefox
>   2.x, the "firefox" USE flag must be replaced by the
>   "xulrunner" USE flag.  Failure to replace the "firefox" USE
>   flag with the "xulrunner" USE flag will result in portage
>   requiring mozilla-firefox 2.x which is incompatible with
>   mozilla-firefox 3.x -- this will block some packages from
>   building.

replace 
"will result in portage requiring mozilla-firefox 2.x" 
with 
"will result in portage attempting to merge mozilla-firefox-2.x"

It's not portage that requires firefox, but some other ebuilds.

Other than that, the language makes sense and is technically accurate - not 
too much detail, but enough info to tell the user what to do. You got the 
intent right - the user does not really have a choice about what to USE if 
they want ff-3

-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com