Apparently, though unproven, at 23:18 on Wednesday 17 November 2010, Grant Edwards did opine thusly:
> > No, but they generally set the USE defaults to give the same settings > > as running ./configure with none. In other words, they are following > > the upstream defaults. > > We seem to be going around in circles. :) > > The merits of using HAL for Xorg config aside, I am still curious > about where the "default" configuration for a package comes from. Is > there a written policy somewhere that tells devs how to set the > default USE flags? All the clues are in http://devmanual.gentoo.org/index.html but it requires a gigantic dose of brain smarts and think-for-yourself. Developers of any sort have to be in the upper-IQ range of humanity (otherwise they couldn't develop shit) so this is a fairly safe assumption. You will notice that the tree contains relatively few Gentoo-maintained patch files (compared to say Ubuntu and Red Hat). Gentoo prefers to get patches from upstream or some other distro. The manual is full of references to get patches and bugs registered and fixed upstream instead of in the tree. Now, the only sane way this could work in a sane ecosystem is to track upstream as close as possible while not breaking things. An ebuild maintainer sets the USE flags in whatever suitable way {,s}he feels like to make that come about. The entire spirit in which the manual is written communicates that concept strongly. Very little of this is documented in an idiot-tree do-this-now-do-that fashion because: a. our devs are not idiots. b. our devs are assumed to have smarts upstairs. c. our devs are assumed to only pretend to be pedantic geeky gits who nit-pick about words, and not to actually *be* like that their entire life 24/7/365/75. In other words, they can think with a concept and not need instructions. d. they do not need a manual to know how to breathe either. Same principle. -- alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
