Maciej Mrozowski wrote:
While it usually doesn't do any particular harm (but I guess security and
prefix/alt team won't agree on this) - insanely enabling everything by default
The Prefix team does not care either way.
is not the best idea in my opinion.
Of course we need an example. Let's have a look at latest stable media-
video/mplayer-1.0_rc2_p20090322 ebuild:
IUSE="3dnow 3dnowext +a52 +aac aalib +alsa altivec +amrnb +amrwb arts +ass
bidi bindist bl +cddb +cdio cdparanoia -cpudetection -custom-cflags
-custom-cpuopts debug dga +dirac directfb doc +dts +dv dvb +dvd +dvdnav dxr3
+enca +encode esd +faac +faad fbcon ftp gif ggi -gtk +iconv ipv6 jack
joystick jpeg kernel_linux ladspa libcaca lirc +live lzo mad md5sum +mmx
mmxext mng +mp2 +mp3 musepack nas +nemesi +network openal +opengl oss png pnm
pulseaudio pvr +quicktime radio +rar +real +rtc -samba
+schroedinger sdl +speex sse sse2 ssse3 svga teletext tga +theora +tremor
+truetype +unicode v4l v4l2 vdpau vidix +vorbis -win32codecs +X +x264 xanim
xinerama +xscreensaver +xv +xvid xvmc zoran"
Personally I'd really like to hear some explanation from maintainers about the
reasons mplayer needs all those dependencies or why they are *really*
recommended for every user of *any* profile (let me remind this).
But thats's not the point - the point is, Gentoo probably needs some policy to
advise, when some newly added USE flags are appropriate to be enabled by
default.
I suggest as follows:
- When newly added USE flag makes already provided feature optional - needs to
be enabled by default (this is required to make package feature set somewhat
invariant after update)
- When newly added USE flag adds new feature that is considered very common
(that's tricky part and decision should be always made by herd, not individual
developer) *but* *does* *not* *pull* *any* *dependencies* - enable by default
- in any other case *do* *not* *enable* by default - (why? because "I use it
so I'll enable it by default" is not enough of an explanation)
What's the opinion on that? I guess we need some policy or at least some
suggestion mentioned in devmanual - really..
IUSE defaults or USE defaults in profiles..Either way...someone will
complain. This is why you can disable flags in package.use, *or* select
a non-desktop profile. meh..
-Jeremy
