Floyd Anderson wrote: > On Sun, 05 Feb 05:05:56 -0600 > Dale <[email protected]> wrote: >> The point of my post was not for a specific flag. I just picked a >> flag that has been around for a long time and pretty much everyone >> recognizes what it is for. >> >> […] >> >> I might add, there are flags that we can't change. Those are set by >> upstream or the devs. My post wasn't about that either. It was all >> about managing options that we can change.. > > I think there is an unfortunate misunderstanding and I may have to be > more clear. I also just picked the threads-flag example as what it is, > an example — not as a specific advise. My intention was to demonstrate > my thoughts when I read the post from the dev list. > > Basically I handle my USE flags similar as you do and had described in > your former post. What I always want goes to make.conf (trying to keep > it according to less is more) and specific flags lives in package.use. > > When I read the post from Rich, I remember that I have the mentioned > ‘threads’ flag globally set. Some time ago I put it in, it works and > nearly no thoughts were wasted since then. I didn’t care about: > • pulling in heavyweight dependencies > • package maintainers set a flag off by default for stability > • ... > > in that moment. That was what I mean with rethinking might be worth > before *I* set a flag globally. Hope it’s clearer now ;-) >
I read your post a couple times, I could see two different ways to read it. I sort of addressed them both. One way of me seeing it was based on some other replies. I see the way you meant it now tho. That's the thing about text, it's hard to put emotion etc into it. ;-) Unless it is like Duncan's. His posts are long but there isn't much room for reading something the wrong way either. lol When I did my last install for this new puter, I did mine this way. I do the base install and rebooted. I poked around to make sure things were working right and stable, network for sure. Then I synced and looked at the output, I always use the -a option. What I looked for, USE flags and what was on, what was off and what would be changing. Some USE flags are obvious but some require one to do a euse -i <USE flag> to see what it does and sometimes a google search. If I see something that is not what I want, I then decide if it should be global or for a specific set of packages and put it where it makes sense. I might add, that is how I do with my updates from then on. I sync, emerge -uvaDN world and look at what is changing and such. If I don't like a setting, or something is new, go set it like I want it. How one does that is debatable for sire. Different tools, methods and thought processes lead to different ways. >> You have choices on how to do things, pick the one that works and >> does what you need. It's a strong point for Gentoo. I think USE >> flags are one of the biggest features of Gentoo. It's not like we >> have a fancy installer that can read our minds. ROFL >> >> It is interesting to see and read how others do this tho. It's amazing >> sometimes how many different ways the same thing can be managed and >> still work. I'm not sure any other distro can do that, not that I used >> others in a long time. > > That’s why Gentoo is often regarded as the freedom of choice. I love > it to think for myself and not only consume what other OSes provides > or not provides. Therefore (besides the USE flag feature) and because > almost everything we feed our machines with, is plain text, we have > the ability for creating ebuilds, overlays, patches. That’s so > exciting even it may be hard sometimes, to learn all those stuff and > stay up to date with it. > I admit, I leave most of it to the devs. I'm not a coder or even a script kid. Heck, setting up a cron job requires google and some reading. I started using Gentoo back in 2003 and the old 1.4 days. It was interesting back then for sure. Heck, portage and friends has come a very long ways since then. Blockers and such handle what used to be huge problems when upgrading. Add in that age is making other things I have to do take longer, not to mention health issues, I just don't have time to dig to deep. Gentoo certainly has choice. If one really wants to control every single thing there is, USE="-* <insert USE flags>" will get a person there in a hurry. If one doesn't want control, just something that works, pick a good profile and go for it. For some, that is all that is needed. Gentoo has hiccups at times and some things worry me but generally, good options are available. Dale :-) :-)
