On Tuesday 23 December 2008 00:07:40 Stroller wrote: > On 22 Dec 2008, at 17:51, Alan McKinnon wrote: > >> ... > >> I would prefer it if Portage handled this without USE flag masking > >> being necessary. If the required package is masked, or needs some > >> other keyword, then IMO `emerge -p mplayer` should simply give an > >> "unable to fulfil this USE - packages may be masked or keyworded" > >> error. IMO `emerge mplayer` should simply install the package without > >> fulfilling the USE. But clearly there are reasons why this is > >> impractical. > > > > ... > > The machine will do what the admin said it must do. It will do no > > more and no > > less. > > > > An active USE means that the admin wants packages built with that > > support. The > > admin's wishes are very explicit in this regard, there is nothing > > implied > > about it. So if the USE cannot be fulfilled, the only appropriate > > answer > > is "I'm sorry, I cannot do that" and end with an error code. > > But the masking tells Portage to ignore what the admin says, anyway. > So what's the difference?
The difference is that when the flag is masked, some dev has determined that the flag cannot work so will not be used by default. That's OK, a human has directed that it be so and the software did not try and make a decision - it just followed instructions. If YOU unmask a masked item, that means that you want it done anyway and the software should comply. Some cases are obviously impossible to fulfil - such as installing proprietary nvidia video drivers on a ppc machine. The driver doesn't exist so it would be valid in that case to always fail despite what the admin says. The thread is more about the case where the devs said one thing, the admin asked for another thing, something needs to be unmasked to fulfil the instructions and the software decided "stuff it, I'm just going to go right ahead and merge it anyway with the support I was explicitly asked to provide". That proposal is ludicrous and completely counter to the Unix way of doing things. -- alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com> > Stroller.
