Re: [gentoo-user] Need help with USE options.

[Dale]

Holly Bostick wrote:

>
>
>The first thing you need to understand is that USE flags enable/disable
>*optional* support for supplemental applications. USE flags will never
>affect anything that you "need" (to run the system), though it may
>affect things that you "want" (for your own ease and comfort).
>
>

That I knew but the global settings may enable support that I do not 
need/want, gnome being one of them.

> <snip>
>
>
>So, add "-gnome" to your global USE flags-- oh, I see you already do--
>and then do an emerge -uaDNtv world (to recompile all apps compiled with
>"gnome" support without it), and then an emerge depclean -p  and then an
>emerge depclean (or unmerge various packages individually) to remove the
>now-unnecessary GNOME libs that were previously installed. You might
>also want to disable "gtk", and "gtk2".
>
>When you say you "have a lot of gnome stuff installed", what precisely
>do you mean, anyway? You seem to have -gnome in your USE flags, so it's
>not as if  you have applications installing unnecessary (for you) GNOME
>libs and such. And surely you did not explicitly install GNOME-- or did
>you? If so, unmerge it (if you emerged gnome or gnome-light, this will
>only unmerge the meta packages, not the applications installed by the
>meta packages), and then do an emerge depclean -p (and then an emerge
>depclean, or unmerge the packages individually) to remove the
>now-orphaned GNOME dependencies.
>
>

I just recently added that -gnome.  I didn't have it in there when I 
emerged everything else on my system.  Since I didn't know any better 
before, I want to correct that now.  I was going to just do a quick 
reinstall but I seemed to have it removed by seeing what depclean 
returned and removing things I didn't need manually, mostly gnome 
stuff.  If I did a reinstall, I was going to copy the kernel, kernels 
config, world file, and a few config files that I changed over and let 
it do its thing.  I did that a while back when I changed drives.  
Make.conf was one of those config files too.

>But you may have a number of packages that depend natively on GNOME/GTK
>libs; and if so, then you're just stuck with those, in the same way I'm
>stuck with kdebase and qt if I want to use K3b. If that's a real problem
>for you, investigate what programs those may be and see if you can find
>a KDE or generic X-based alternative (for example, if you use gcolor2, a
>GTK/GNOME color-chooser, you may want to switch to kcoloredit, the KDE
>color chooser).
>
>
>
><snip>
>
>

>This means nothing to me, since I have no idea what your system does or
>what you do with it.
>
>Do you need optional "java" and "javascript" support globally, for
>example? Do you develop java or javascript? Maybe you do; I don't know--
>at least then having the "gcj" USE flag enabled would make sense (since
>"gcj" is the gcc support for a java compiler, afaik).
>
>Myself, I don't, so I disabled that globally, and only enabled it in
>/etc/portage/package.use for those programs I know I want java and
>javascript support for (firefox, basically).
>
>

I just know I use java so I stuck it in there.  I don't develope java 
stuff though.  Java works so I'm not beating it up.  It may break for 
spight.  (sp?)

>Do you do desktop publishing? Do you even use scribus? Do all
>applications you may or may not have installed that *can* use Scribus
>actually *need* to have *optional* "scribus" support enabled?
>
>

I do use Scribus on occasion.  It's easier for me than OOo on some things.

>And if you don't use a database, why do you have the innodb USE flag
>enabled?
>
>

I did install mysql once and then removed it.  I guess I missed that USE 
option when I removed mysql.  Thanks for pointing that out.  See, you 
did know something about that USE line.  LOL

>USE flags customize your system to your personal needs, and I cannot
>know your personal needs-- only you can.
>
>So I would suggest reading through /usr/portage/profiles/use.desc and
>/usr/portage/profiles/use.local.desc to understand what the USE flags
>you have enabled actually do. Myself, I have an alias in ~/.bashrc,
>"stolen" from this list, to quickly scan USE flag definitions:
>
>alias useflag="grep /usr/portage/profiles/use.*desc -e"
>
>So if I do an emerge -uaDNtv world and see a USE flag I don't
>understand, I can just do a
>(taken from the k3b USE flags above):
>
> useflag sndfile
>/usr/portage/profiles/use.desc:sndfile - Adds support for libsndfile
>
>and make my own decision about whether I want libsndfile support enabled
>or not.
>
>I've gotta say, that when I install Gentoo, the longest part of the
>installation for me is in fact not the kernel compilation (that's the
>second longest), but the scanning of the USE flags and reading of the
>notes, to make sure I disable what I don't want and enable what I do. I
>could, of course, just leave everything be, and then fix it all later as
>you are now doing (that's easy enough), but I'm a recovering
>perfectionist as well, so I like to take the time and get it closer to
>right the first time.
>
>

I do regularly use the -v option and then look up the options for it.  
If I don't need it, I remove it or disable it one.  I'm learning.

>My USE flags are pretty generic
>
>USE="-kde -arts -eds -esd 16bit 3dnow acpi -apm audiofile -berkdb
>bigger-fonts caps cddb dbus dga dv dvd fbcon firefox font-server
>gimpprint glut gtkhtml gnutls hal iconv inkjar -ipv6 jack jikes
>kdeenablefinal kdexdeltas lcms libcaca maildir mmx mng -mozilla mpi nfs
>nptl offensive openexr -pam pic portaudio povray sndfile socks5 sqlite
>sse -sse2 svg threads toolbar unicode v4l wmf xprint xvid yv12"
>
>but my /etc/portage/package.use is 115 lines.
>
>

Holy crap, that's a lot to keep up with.  Me not as genius as you are.  
o_O  I would have a lot of commented lines in there to help me remember 
what I did it for.   I'm getting to old I think.

>I'm happy with that because even looking at it now, I can see that my
>global USE flags really */are/* global, enabling support for things I
>don't want to have to worry about (I want everything that could have
>unicode support to actually have it enabled without me worrying about
>it) and disabling support for things I know I don't want (if any package
>I may choose to compile could have KDE
>support, I know I don't want it, without having to worry about it, and I
>don't think I even have ipv6, so I know I don't want that), and
>so I know the reason that my package.use is so long is because it
>enables/disables *specific* options in *specific* applications, which is
>what it's supposed to do.
>
>Such as
>
>media-video/ffmpeg -mmx
>
>Globally, I want mmx support, but ffmpeg won't compile on my system if
>such support is enabled, so the support is disabled for that particular
>program.
>
>On the other hand, "extra" documentation support (the "doc" USE flag) is
>usually disabled by default if it appears at all, but I've enabled it
>for imagemagick:
>
>media-gfx/imagemagick doc
>
>because I consider imagemagick complex enough that I want to have the
>docs available (because I will surely need them).
>
>I use Samba, but I don't necessarily want everything that can have Samba
>support to have Samba support, so for certain packages, "samba" is
>specifically enabled in package.use, but not globally.
>
>That's the way it's supposed to work, afaik. It does mean you have to
>buckle down and think about what you specifically want/need, but
>"customization" always requires that, whether it's because you're
>detailing your hotrod (I've clearly seen too much "American Chopper",
>"Pimp My Ride" and "Wheeler Dealers" this week, damn boyfriend, damn
>Discovery and MTV) or because you're fine-tuning Gentoo.
>
>HTH,
>Holly
>
>


I have watched those shows too.  I do want to start to learn my rig and 
how to configure it correctly.  That package.use file has a line or two 
in it but it was because a package would not compile for me too. 

I'm tired again.  Looks like I'm going back to bed.  I think my skin is 
going through a cycle again.  I get up, fiddle around then go back to 
bed.  < sighs >  This sucks.

Dale
:-)

-- 
To err is human, I'm most certainly human.

I have four rigs:

1:  Home built; Abit NF7 ver 2.0 w/ AMD 2500+ CPU, 1GB of ram and right now two 80GB hard drives.  Named Smoker
2:  Home built; Iwill KK266-R w/ AMD 1GHz CPU, 256MBs of ram and a 4GB drive.  Named Swifty
3:  Home built; Gigabyte GA-71XE4 w/ 800MHz CPU, 224MBs of ram and a 2.5GB drive.  Named Pokey
4:  Compaq Proliant 6000 Server w/ Quad 200MHz CPUs, 128MBs of ram and a 4.3GB SCSI drive.  Named Putput

All run Gentoo Linux, all run folding. #1 is my desktop, 2, 3, and 4 are set up as servers.  

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