On 08/13/2017 03:11 AM, Michael Orlitzky wrote:
> On 08/12/2017 10:52 PM, Duncan wrote:
>>
>> How so?  Are you arguing that deciding to system-wide switch to/from 
>> pulseaudio, systemd, or gstreamer is nonsense?
>>
> 
> The meaning of any one USE flag varies widely across packages. I could
> never say "I want to enable USE=gstreamer" for every package in the
> tree, because I have no idea what it does for most of them. Setting
> USE=whatever globally essentially means "make random changes to my
> system" -- hence my wording.
> 
> The meaning of a USE flag is per-package, so per-package is the only
> meaningful way to set them.
> 
There are USE flag situations that are relevant at the global level.
systemd, pulseaudio, alsa, gstreamer, openssl/libressl, libav/ffmpeg,
vim-syntax, and so on. Then there's USE_EXPAND variables, which might
mean different things in different packages and yet I see nothing in
your argument covering them.

These flags make perfect sense at the global level, because users
generally want support for the choices they make, and they make choices
on that *general* level first, before diving into package-specific USE
flags. It's a monumental waste of developer and user time to manually
set major USE flags in every relevant package. Some people are picky and
will still do that, but global USE ensures that certain assumptions are
made about your system. If you don't want assumptions, don't use global
USE. There's no reason to deprive others of functionality you don't
personally agree with or use.

Granted, some flags don't belong in make.conf. But part of Gentoo's
beauty is that we *do* let users proverbially saw their leg off, if
that's what they really want. There are lots of use cases that would be
made ridiculous in scope if we got rid of global USE. Is your only
answer a megabyte-long p.use file?

That said, I like your idea of clearing up revbump decisions and the
angle of reducing development burden. This particular idea comes at too
high a cost for my taste, as we stand to lose functionality rather than
improve or gain it.

~zlg
-- 
Daniel Campbell - Gentoo Developer
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