On Sat, 2005-01-15 at 17:44 +0000, Stuart Herbert wrote: > Why does "package" have to equal "source"? Why can't package equal "Gentoo > package"? > > And why do you feel the need to make your definition so ... tight? > Restrictive? Unimaginiative? Beaurocratic? What benefit do our users get > from you choosing to split this particular hair?
What you call tight I call well defined. It is no help to shift meanings based on interpretations or situations, it only adds to the confusion. > > Would you rather have 3k of USE flags you can't deal with to begin with. > > You know, I actually don't find it difficult to deal with the ~300 global USE > flags and ~830 local USE flags that we currently have. All I do is > > emerge -uav <package> > > and look at the USE flags listed in the output. *This* is where I actually > deal with USE flags, and this way means that I only have to deal with a few > at a time. This approach makes the number of USE flags in Portage largly > irrelevant. Instead, it's the number of flags that packages support which > becomes important. Apart from the odd anomoly (like PHP), the use flags / > package ratio is very small, and should be within the capacity of most people > to cope with. What you forget is that you are a developer with a hundred times better understanding of Gentoo than the general user. Also the way you deal with USE flags & setting them is probably not the way most people handle them, otherwise we wouldn't have the different GUI USE flag tools. If you can agree with that, then you can also see that the amount of USE flags is a problem. And to be honest not only the amount, but also the differing interpretations. A bit besides the point, but the last is already obviously troublesome even for devs, because there's different USE flags for the same things or USE flag with different interpretations per pack. Anyway, the way you handle them is already indicative of where we are heading, every update on a per package basis you have to deal with USE flags. Not 'set once, run with it afterwards' anymore. Already in your personal example dealing with USE flags has become a time consuming repetitive task. And you are a dev even. > I think the 'camp' consistently fails to present any positive suggestions > about what can be done to address the issues that you have. It's not an issue that I personally have, I can deal with it. It's a tendency I see in how users and devs handle the distro. The positive input is : think before you add a USE flag, which seems often the skipped step. > You're fighting a battle with no clearly definied objective, no clear > strategy > for achieving the objective, and - most importantly - not a single line of > code to change Portage's behaviour. It's no wonder you're not making any > progress on this. I'm just raising awareness and like most devs I have more things to do, it just happened to come up right now. > Instead of saying that John shouldn't have added this automated capability > via > USE flags, you'd get a lot further (and, frankly, be more respected) if you > suggested how else he *could* have done it. And even further if you coughed > up some code to make it possible. In my opinion it shouldn't be added in the first place, if it's a sensible feature it should be default. If it's not, well let the vocal minority yell at you for a while, that's gonna happen at one point or the other anyway. There's a tendency among devs to take the easy way out and go with the socially acceptable solution instead of the best. > At the moment, USE flags are the only per-package mechanism available to > users > to indicate their choices. Maybe we need per-package FEATURES? That would > seem a more appropriate place for John's symlink support? How would it be more appropriate & how would it be different at all ? > The world hasn't ended just because John added a USE flag. Ridiculizing the opinions of others to prove your point, a bit of a cheap shot. And not the first time it happened in this one reply. - foser
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