Okay, this thread has been going nowhere for too long, and it's blocking
progress. It's time to make a decision and be done with it.
I hereby christen the two variants of gentoo prefix "prefix guest" for the
variant that has nongentoo include and library search paths and a nongentoo
dynamic linker; and "prefix standalone" for which the dynamic linker and all
search paths are strictly inside the prefix installation.
I will introduce a single new USE flag, masked in nonprefix profiles and
forced in prefix guest profiles, "prefix-guest"; this USE flag with codify
exactly the two properties specified above. I have decided not to use a
second USE flag for the alternative after all; a look through the tree has
shown that this would be useful at exactly one place (toolchain.eclass) and
nowhere else, and at that point it's just a waste of complexity.
I will not use a USE_EXPAND variable, because there isn't really a (relevant)
single setting that can take on multiple values across different prefix
variants; rather, there is just the single deviation from normal gentoo
system setups which may or may not apply to a given prefix variant, so a
simple USE flag saying "this 'feature' is in effect" is the appropriate tool
for the job.
I will create profiles default/linux/$arch/13.0/prefix/{guest,standalone}, of
which the first is a link to prefix/linux/$arch and the second is the new
profile to be written. I will not for now name either the "default" prefix
profile on linux archs per the name default/linux/$arch/13.0/prefix, as I
think that choice is best delayed until after we have more experience with
how well the two variants work in practice; naming one the default is easy,
but changing this decision later on is hard without breaking compatibility.
Thus, for now default/linux/$arch/13.0/prefix will stay empty.
I will create a common base for the two variant profiles in features/prefix,
with both variant profiles inheriting it. After all, the majority of profile
hacks in the current prefix profiles would apply in full force in
prefix-standalone.
Unless there are any complaints, I'm planning to make all this a reality in a
few days.
Thoughts?
-- Ruud
