On Wed, 2004-05-19 at 14:48 -0400, Jon Portnoy wrote:
> See the rest of the discussion, particularly about people *not* having 
> to sift through hundreds of USE flags if ufed was fixed, and also the 
> fact that USE flag grouping can fix the ballooning global flags issue.

USE flag grouping still is basic step from what we have now, not a
re-evalution. Don't fail to realize that USE flags at this point
represent a lot of different concepts and that mere grouping is a
temporary hack, not a solution.

Ufed : tools to use tools. This whole discussion somehow got focused on
USE flags, but it is much broader than that. It's more the concept that
added complexity decreases control on an individual level.

Most people used to be drawn to Gentoo because of it's adaptability, but
we're losing that to adding cruft for rare use case scenario's. Portage
gets more and more obscure features, while basic stuff like normal dep
tracking is still lacking and there are a few half finished concepts
lying around (like SLOTs) that still need fixing.
Focus has been on the wrong areas, rarely used niceties over a solid
basic framework. A building is as strong as it's base.

- foser