Tomáš Chvátal <[email protected]> posted [email protected], excerpted below, on Mon, 27 Apr 2009 11:03:08 +0200:
> Dne pondělí 27 Duben 2009 10:59:46 Jan Kundrát napsal(a): >> Tomáš Chvátal wrote: >> > Dne pondělí 27 Duben 2009 10:45:49 Alexey Shvetsov napsal(a): >> >> Hi all! >> >> I think its better to split kde use flag into 2 new use flags kde3 >> >> and kde4 so it will not confuse users =) >> > >> > As we spoke earlier with others on irc: kde3 stuff = kde3 useflag >> > kde4 stuff (or any newest kde which is around) = kde useflag where if >> > kde4 gets outdated it will get kde4 useflag. >> >> Is there any single package that supports both KDE3 and KDE4? > Some are, > The issue is currently that user globaly enable kde and now with for > example subversion he gets pulled kde4. Before the discussion goes too far, please please either go back and check the dev-list archives or talk to some of the devs that have been around for awhile. It's relatively easy to both confuse users and make further version changes MUCH more difficult than they need to be, and looking thru the archives will provide much material on all the angst that previous policies generated by not getting it right. In particular, don't make the mistake gtk/gtk2 did for awhile. USE=gtk indicated a general desire to have gtk (of any version) support, while USE=gtk2 indicated that gtk2 should be favored over gtk1, otherwise, gtk1 was the default. That policy, which looked quite reasonable when gtk2 was new and experimental, ended up boxing them into a corner as gtk2 improved and became the dominant version, while gtk1 grew stale and was eventually deprecated in the Gentoo tree and later masked and ultimately removed (along with any packages, xmms being one of the most popular, that hadn't upgraded to gtk2 by then), and they ultimately ended up changing it in a way that couldn't be anything /but/ rough for some users. But even before that it was a pain, because it didn't follow the intuitive idea that USE=gtk meant gtk1 support while USE=gtk2 meant gtk2 support. New users very often enabled gtk2 without enabling gtk, believing they were expressing a desire for gtk2 support but NOT gtk1, when instead what it was really expressing was, don't support gtk (of any version) unless you have to, but if it's mandatory and there's a choice, choose gtk2 over gtk1. Unfortunately there's few if any Gentoo/KDE devs remaining around from that time. I'm not sure about Gentoo/GNOME or Gentoo/GTK. However, note that such USE flag changes will be global in any case due to their popularity, and thus should be discussed on the dev list and if I'm not mistaken, run by council. I'm not sure about the others, but Donnie was certainly around at the time, and is on council so his opinion will certainly matter in any case. It's thus worth getting his input and those of any others that ware around then to remember, as it could well prevent some needless palm-to-forehead, "how could they have done that /again/ sometime in the future. -- Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs. "Every nonfree program has a lord, a master -- and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman
