Martin Schlemmer wrote:
On Sat, 2005-10-01 at 21:22 +0100, Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
We've discussed adding this to metadata.xml a few times in the past,
but every time there was opposition from a vocal minority of one who
claimed that USE flags should always do exactly the same thing for
every package.
I guess I am one of this 'minority'. The question I just want to have
answered, is how the hell are you going to get a system up sanely (and
without tweaking /etc/portage/package.use) if besides the 350 global USE
flags, and the 1200 local USE flags, you now have to worry about global
USE flags meaning different things for every package?
By using package specific USE flag descriptions stored in metadata.xml
to overlay those in use.desc and use.local.desc. This info would be
output by the currently existing utilities that provide USE flag info
(euse, equery, ufed/used, etc). I don't think any changes to portage
would be needed. This would be an opt-in feature - only those
maintainers who want this support would need to implement it. If no
metadata descriptions exist then they're pulled from use.desc and
use.local.desc just as they are now.
Global USE flags already do mean different things for every package.
Just look at 'debug' or 'doc' ;). Having more information available
just makes administration easier.
--de.
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