> An interesting thought. Vim and Gvim comes to mind. We probably don't > need to use different names everytime we use different flags though. > But yes, this is the use-flags discussion all over again. I thought > long and hard about this, and I'm getting hopeless that a > nice-and-clean design for use-flags is possible (at least "nicer and > cleaner" than what Gentoo has). Maybe we just have to bite the bullet > and implement something very much like Portage's USE flags.
I've never successfully gotten Gentoo to work correctly on any of my systems, and I think USE flags are part of the reason. It seemed as though every time I failed to get something to compile, the most detailed troubleshooting information I could get was "check your USE flags." Frustrating. Maybe I'm just an idiot. An idea for the Vim and Gvim thing, which might apply to other recipes, would be to add support for a directory called Resources/ Optional. In that directory, there would be a subdirectory for each optional ./configure flag the recipe author wants to support, complete with its own dependencies file. So, for the Vim recipe, there might be something like this: Resources/Optional/Gvim/Description Resources/Optional/Gvim/RecipeChanges Resources/Optional/Gvim/AdditionalDependencies I'd suggest a good default behavior would be to check all the AdditionalDependencies files, and automatically enable all the optional features that have their dependencies met. Other optional features would get something interactive like this: > Gvim is a graphical interface to vi using GTK. In addition to > including all of the usual vi commands, it also allows for point- > and-click operation, and integration with the X11 clipboards. > Compile: Compile optional support for Gvim? [y/N] RecipeChanges could then include something very short and simple like this: Append_To_Array configure_options --with-gvim I have three problems with this idea: 1. I'm not sure I like the name "RecipeChanges" 2, more importantly, I'm not sure I like making the Compile process any more interactive than it already is. There'd have to be some configuration options available to decide what will and will not be enabled, which, of course, translates back into USE flags. On the other hand, this would at least give the new user an easier time of things. Compile Vim would work the way they wanted by default whether they had done anything to that part of their configuration or not. 3. This would mean slightly more work and slightly more confusion for recipe authors. Just an idea. _______________________________________________ gobolinux-devel mailing list gobolinux-devel@lists.gobolinux.org http://lists.gobolinux.org/mailman/listinfo/gobolinux-devel
