John Jolet schreef: > > On Oct 14, 2005, at 2:13 PM, Ciaran McCreesh wrote: > >> On Thu, 13 Oct 2005 16:29:39 +0100 (WEST) Jorge Almeida >> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: | I would like to know how the >> current USE variables are set. | 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? >> >> Uh, no. USE flags do not control whether packages get installed. >> They control whether something which has **optional** support will >> use it. So, for things with optional emboss support, by default the >> emboss support will be enabled. Which makes sense, because if >> you're installing science apps, you'll probably want it, and if >> you're not installing science apps you'll never see it anyway. >> > but if a program has optional support for a package that CAN be a > prerequisite, based on USE flags, emerge will install that > prerequisite or not. In that way, they DO control whether packages > get installed. >
Well, that's true... and I'll even leave aside the fact that USE flags are the lesser of whatever evils in terms of dragging in "unwanted" additional applications or libraries, since at least with USE flags you can control it, but with hard dependencies, you of course can't. But given that /etc/make.conf (and /etc/portage/package.use) trumps everything, and given that you can easily see what flags are in use with emerge info and emerge --verbose, I don't see what the big deal is as to what the defaults are and where they are set in the first place. If a USE flag does something you don't want, unset it. Defaults are not the be-all and end-all of existence; the very presence of 'defaults' means that the user can control them (if something has a 'default' setting, that necessarily means that other settings are possible). It's not as if knowing that the default USE flags are set in /etc/make.profile (plus other cascaded locations) makes the first hairy bit of difference, since the user will never be able to control the contents of that file, but only override their contents manually in the aforementioned /etc/make.conf and /etc/portage/package.use. You could edit /etc/make.profile if you liked, I suppose, but Portage will update it at one or more various points anyway, and then where are you? Sorry, just a bit cranky this evening. Holly -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
