Re: [gentoo-user] libav and ffmpeg on the same computer issue once again

[Neil Bothwick]

On Sat, 16 May 2015 07:16:58 -0400, Rich Freeman wrote:

> > Unless your screen is IMAX-sized, two screens of text is a lot more
> > lightfooted than add extra libraries to nearly 200 packages - and most
> > of that text is comments anyway.
> >
>
> Well, it can be a lot more than two screens of text.  I have 1300
> lines of package.use, almost all of it for abi_x86_32.  I suspect that
> this the result of stuff like steam, wine, android-sdk-update-manager,
> and eternal-lands - all packages that involve graphics libraries and
> toolkits with huge dependency trees.

Does that include the several lines of comments, often repeated, that
portage includes in the auto-unmask output? I just checked two systems
for abi_x86_32 and got around 130 lines in one and 220 in the other.

The smaller number is for a laptop with a lighter install, although there
isn't a massive difference between the total number of packages installed
on each. Enabling the flag globally would probably affect the lighter,
and slower, system more.

> 1.  Portage's error messages when it is unable to produce a resolution
> are really confusing - somewhere in that wall of text are some clues
> that might eventually lead you to the likely 1-3 use flag or keyword
> tweaks that will fix the whole mess, but good luck finding it.  Your
> example isn't even a terribly bad one - when you get those errors with
> something like qt it goes on forever.
>
> 2.  Portage requires non-package-default use flags to always be
> specified explicitly either globally or per-package.  I don't have to
> put qt in my world file to install kde, because portage knows it is
> needed and just installs it, and removes it when it is no longer
> needed.  However, if something needs the qt use flag, portage can't
> treat it the same way.
>
> Now, there are certainly reasons why both of these issues exist.
> Solving them may not be trivial, and in the case of #2 perhaps there
> may be unintended consequences like unnecessary package rebuilds to
> progressively add/remove flags. And, of course, somebody has to do the
> work and since I'm not busy writing patches to portage right now I'm
> not going to complain too much about it.
>
> However, I really think that these are the real issue here.  That, and
> automatically solving depgraph issues isn't trivial.

No argument there. Portage's output can be unhelpful, obtuse, even
misleading at times, but as I'm not in a position to do something about
it, neither am I in a position to complain about it.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

[---- Printed on recycled electrons ----]