All, I know a decision about this type of use flag was made in the past, but especially now with the --newuse option in portage, that decision bothers me, so I would like to re-open the discussion.
I will use logrotate as my example, but what I'm saying also applies for xinetd. I feel that the current approach (using INSTALL_MASK) to control whether these configuration files are installed or not is not well documented. We tell people about it on the mailing lists, but I do not know of a place where it is documented. Also, it seems to be an all or nothing arrangement. If I do not want logrotate support, I have to set the INSTALL_MASK then if I decide later I want it, I have to unset the INSTALL_MASK and run "emerge -e world" to get the files installed. If we use a "logrotate" or "xinetd" use flag, it gives the users better control of which packages have this support, and the --newuse option in portage can be used to rebuild only the affected packages. I guess the argument against the use flag was that packages were being rebuilt just to install configuration files. I can see how that could be a pita for big packages. Did anyone ever bring up using pkg_config to un/install these files based on the use flags? Comments? William
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