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On Tuesday 08 April 2008, Michael Schmarck wrote: |
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> Neil Bothwick <neil@××××××××××.uk> wrote: |
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> > On Tue, 08 Apr 2008 13:20:21 +0200, Michael Schmarck wrote: |
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> >> Which majorly sucks, as there are good reasons why the packages |
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> >> should NOT be the way they are right now. |
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> > |
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> > Such as? |
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> |
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> Finer control, without cluttering the world file. |
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Think it through. The purpose of a meta file is to provide one ebuild |
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that pulls in many others. |
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Now, what are you going to make optional and what must remain mandatory? |
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What is affected by the presence or removal of said packages? |
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Take kwalletmanager for instance. Maybe you don't want it so you take it |
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out of USE for kdeutils. Now konqueror doesn't remember your passwords |
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and you type them every time but that's fine as you want it that way. |
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Later you emerge kontact to get kmail but now you do want kwalletmanager |
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(otherwise your account passwords are in a world readable *rc file). |
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Hmm. Need kwalletmanager. Make it mandatory. Except this conflicts |
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nicely with kdeutils and kdelibs. Bugger, now you need to rebuild |
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kdelibs with kwalletmanager support and leave it out of konqueror. |
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Shit. USE flag conflict. OK, take the USE flag out of make.conf, and put |
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it in packages.use. |
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Shit, shit triple shit. There are 200+ kde ebuilds and now you need a |
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separate entry in packages.use for every one that can have |
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kwalletmanager support, some with and some without. My packages.use/ is |
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already waaaaaaaaaaay too cluttered, it's a lousy thing to have to |
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maintain. |
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OK, so now we just stick kwalletmanager support into everything. Open |
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packages.use in vi and get editing, deleting lots of "-" characters. |
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Hang on, this is *nix, I can do: |
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sed 's/-kwalletmanager/kwalletmanager/g' /etc/portage/package.use/* |
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Oops, need to sudo that. Now hope there isn't a package called |
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konqueror-kwalletmanager... |
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Aha! We can fix that permanently! We write a GLEP that says no package |
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can ever have a "-" in it's name followed by the name of any USE flag, |
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either existing or still to come. |
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I could go on, but do you see what is happening? You swap a voluminous |
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(but not complex) world file for a very much more complex make.conf & |
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package.use system. |
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Why would you ever do such a thing? It's insane! |
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> > Hint: uncluttering the world file is not a reason for changing the |
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> > ebuilds, |
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> |
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> Why not? |
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Mostly because the dev says so and you are not the dev. If you are the |
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dev, you get to say how it works. |
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Michael, I think I see what is going on here. You seem to want to |
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announce that the world must support your favourite need of the week, |
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without examining the impact it will have on everyone else and thinking |
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it through. You come across as someone who has never had to maintain |
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software that other people use, as an experienced maintainer quickly |
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loses that point of view (with it, they do not last long enough to |
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become experienced maintainers...) |
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-- |
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Alan McKinnon |
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alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com |
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-- |
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