Pacho Ramos wrote: > Also hit this problem today while trying to bump bluez and noticed we > are using elog messages to tell people to manually install > net-dialup/ppp if they want ppp working with bluez. > > I am unsure about the disadvantages of simply using, for example, > "ppp" USE flag to do that.
I guess the point is that it is not really a dependency. bluez works
fine without ppp, it does not need to be rebuilt to use ppp later,
and ppp is only needed when user wants to use both together.
I think it fits to emerge them separately. It seems reasonable not to
USE for other packages which are merely possible to combine, but
which don't make for a strict dependency.
> 1. We rely in people reading the message to get package working ok.
I dunno if a USE flag is much better? Both require the user to inform
herself in the same way ("when do I need USE=ppp for bluez" vs. "when
do I need to emerge ppp") and take action in the same context (set
USE=ppp for bluez vs. emerge ppp after bluez)..
> 2. If user emerges ppp, it will be recorded in world file and, then, if
> in the future he removes bluez, emerge --depclean want clean no longer
> needed ppp and then, people end up with a lot of packages they needed
> to manually emerge some year but that they problem no longer need at
> all.
Disk is pretty cheap. If the package is never being used and the user
doesn't care to remove it then the package doesn't do any harm IMO,
and as mentioned I think it's difficult for the package manager to
know what the user has installed on the system but no longer needs..
//Peter
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