[2019-09-20 13:24:45-0400] Mike Gilbert: > On Fri, Sep 20, 2019 at 12:55 PM Michał Górny <mgo...@gentoo.org> wrote: > > On Fri, 2019-09-20 at 12:41 -0400, Mike Gilbert wrote: > > > On Fri, Sep 20, 2019 at 12:11 PM Michał Górny <mgo...@gentoo.org> wrote: > > > > On Fri, 2019-09-20 at 11:46 -0400, Mike Gilbert wrote: > > > > > Recently, a large number of bugs were filed against packages that have > > > > > USE flag names which contain underscores. Apparently PMS prohibits > > > > > this except when the USE flag is part of a USE_EXPAND variable. > > > > > > > > > > https://projects.gentoo.org/pms/7/pms.html#x1-200003.1.4 > > > > > > > > > > I'm not certain when this text was added to PMS, or how many of the > > > > > affected USE flags pre-date this policy. > > > > > > > > > > Portage seems to have no issue dealing with underscores, so this > > > > > doesn't seem to be solving any technical problem. > > > > > > > > > > I am pretty sure that renaming a bunch of USE flags will cause some > > > > > amount of end-user confusion, for very little benefit. Is enforcing > > > > > this part of PMS really worth it? > > > > > > > > And having packages with pretended-USE_EXPAND-that-does-not-work-as- > > > > USE_EXPAND is less confusing to the users? > > > > > > I doubt users immediately think "USE_EXPAND" when they see an underscore. > > > > > > Portage's seems fairly unambiguous to me. For example: > > > > > > % emerge -pv1O app-misc/foo > > > > > > These are the packages that would be merged, in order: > > > > > > [ebuild N ] app-misc/foo-0::local USE="-modern_kernel" > > > PYTHON_TARGETS="python3_7" VIDEO_CARDS="radeon" 0 KiB > > > > > > Total: 1 package (1 new), Size of downloads: 0 KiB > > > > > > I don't think anyone would mistake "modern_kernel" for a USE_EXPAND > > > value given the above. > > > > Look at the humongous list of flags on dev-libs/aws-sdk-cpp. They all > > start with 'aws_targets' which is a clear attempt to emulate USE_EXPAND. > > Expect that they won't work as USE_EXPAND, user typing: > > > > AWS_TARGETS="foo bar baz" > > > > will just wildly confused, and in the end this prefixing is just silly > > and causes the flag names to become awfully long. > > Ok, so you chery-picked one particularly horrible example. The Portage > output still puts them in USE="" section, though the user probably > won't see that given the massive USE flag list. > > My point still stands for many of the other packages in the repo that > don't have several dozen flags.
While that's true for portage, it is false for gentoolkit with the `equery u <atom>` command. Following your original example it would be something like: % equery y app-misc/foo [ Legend : U - final flag setting for installation] [ : I - package is installed with flag ] [ Colors : set, unset ] * Found these USE flags for app-misc/foo-0::local U I - - modern_kernel : Install init scripts for 3.18 or higher kernels with atomic rule updates + + python_targets_python3_7 : Build with Python 3.7 - - video_cards_radeon : VIDEO_CARDS setting to build driver for ATI radeon video cards And with a bunch more of USE flags (not with having to go to extremes like dev-libs/aws-sdk-cpp) it is very confusing a lot of time on machines where app-portage/eix would be overkill I had to check on another machine.
