On 3 October 2010 14:20, Richard Freeman <[email protected]> wrote: > Such a solution would also have the virtue of allowing the use of USE > dependencies. So, you would only install the .la files from a > particular library if another package actually needed them. Packages > could also have USE defaults as seems logical to their maintainers and > distro policy.
That's a good point - I did suggest not putting it in USE to avoid cluttering things up for the sake of a use case that most people won't need, but being able to do USE deps would be nice. Maybe a USE_EXPAND_HIDDEN variable could be a compromise, but that itself could be confusing when a package wants to enable a flag that doesn't appear to exist. It probably depends on how often such a dep would actually be needed - I suspect not very often. > Where this would get complex is if we want more than all-or-nothing > resolution. The simplest USE approach would be to have it toggle all > the .la files in the package. However, if you have 5 files that are > essential, and 5 that are likely nothing but trouble it will be harder > to manage that while still allowing full control. I guess careful use > of local flags might work, in combination with some sane policy. I'm > not sure if this is a use case that is even worth worrying about... I think that's unlikely to be a problem, but yes, local flags or the like could be used if it ever does come up.
