>>>>> On Tue, 8 Feb 2011, Ryan Hill wrote: >> If we really implemented it in this way, then I fear that it would >> be difficult for users to find out what flag combinations they can >> use.
> The guideline I usually follow is that flags depending on another > flag being set (eg. png needs X) should be ignored (you can always > ewarn). For flags that conflict with other flags (exactly one of > many, if-this-not-this) use REQUIRED_USE. Does that make sense? Yes, in my opinion it does. Should the devmanual be updated accordingly? (There is already bug 353624 open for it.) Maybe we also need a guideline that whenever possible, ebuilds should accept the default USE flags from our profiles as a valid combination? Or, in the exceptional case when that isn't possible, a package.use entry should be added to profiles. > If we went with your second extreme, if I wanted to disable X for > emacs, I'd also have to add 10 additional flags to package.use on my > system to get it to work. If we were doing that for every package > I'd switch distros. That's what I thought too. ;-) In other words: If an ebuild has n USE flags and the package can be configured in m different ways, then it is _not_ the goal to allow only m of the 2**n possible flag combinations. Ulrich
