Re: [gentoo-dev] Use-Flags cause XMMS, jed and other bloat

[Grant Goodyear <goodyea@clemson.edu>]

> If I have the X-Flag set, which is okay because I want X, and try to emerge
> jed to have a good editor, Gentoo wants to compile the whole XFree-Package to
> also get xjed which I didn't want.

Having X in USE does not mean that you want to compile X itself, it
means that you want packages with _optional_ X functionality to be
compiled with X support.  So, having X in USE meant that you did want
xjed to be built.

> It compiles X with all drivers - Sorcerer Linux asked, which X11-drivers are
> needed.
> Same with alsa - all card-drivers are made, I have to edit the ebuild-file and
> all changes will be gone after the next emerge rsync.

Well, Gentoo and Sorcerer have different philosophies there.  The Gentoo
Linux philosophy is that it should be possible to build the entire
system, as desired, without ever asking the user.  I believe that an
environment variable ALSA_CARDS can be set to control which cards
are built with alsa-0.9.  We should have that in the 0.5 series, too,
but nobody has gotten around to it.  As for building X modules, we
should have a similar mechanism, you're quite right.  If you post
an "enhancement" bug about this at bugs.gentoo.org you'll maximize
the chance of this happening in a reasonable amount of time.

> As you see with XMMS and the complainments about the avi-plugin, especially
> the Gentoo-user wants to have the power to control what is compiled and
> installed.

I do know that one of our devs was working on this problem yesterday.

> And if I correctly understand the webpage then this is what Gentoo wants to
> provide - but IMHO it doesn't at the moment.

Fair enough.  Care to help?  We gratefully accept any help we can get.

Thanks,
g2boojum