Jorge Almeida schreef: > I would like to know how the current USE variables are set.
Afaik, they are set by /etc/make/profile/make.defaults, and overridden/added to globally by /etc/make.conf, and individually by /etc/portage/package.use. > I know that "emerge --info" displays a list of all of them, but it > doesn't discriminate where they come from. I couldn't find clear > documentation about it, but of course I may have missed something. In > the same line, I find /etc/make.profile/make.defaults _very strange_. > "perl"? Sure. "fortran"? Well, who knows... But "emboss"?! (In case > it doesn't ring a bell immediately: emboss - Adds support for the > European Molecular Biology Open Software Suite) Could this be a joke? > Ah, home users, always thinking the universe revolves around them :-). Linux is quite popular in the scientific community, you know-- I'm sure the admins at (oh, I dunno, let's just make up something) at Berkely (where the Seti @Home project is based) or any random lab at MIT feels the same way when they see +kde as a default USE flag. The default USE flags represent 'sane defaults' for the broadest range of the Gentoo userbase (which I assume the devs know more about than you or I-- certainly I, at least). So if they feel that a significant enough portion of that userbase values the emboss flag, who am I to argue? The whole point of Gentoo is customization, so half of the default USE flags that do apply to me I disable, and then add another quarter-set of ones that aren't in the defaults at all-- I spend an hour or two, when installing, just going through USE flags and setting them up to my personal tastes. I admit, I've never disabled emboss, because I don't use any programs that require that USE flag, so I'm happy to let it be. > I'm writing "-*" at the beginning of the USE declaration in > /etc/make.conf, but I can't avoid the feeling that this may be a Bad > Thing. Some say it is, some say it's the only way to go. Never done it myself, so I don't know one way or another. I eventually have to set my USE flags anyway (going through them to see what they are if I don't know), so I don't really see the point in not just getting that over with, but it's possible that I've missed some hidden benefit of this procedure. Holly -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
