On Fri, 2006-06-09 at 14:10 +0100, Roy Marples wrote:
> Some packages provide both a client and a server. As such, users usually only 
> want one or the other - and rarely both.
> 
> A good candidate is net-misc/dhcp as it installs a DHCP client and server. 
> Which makes no sense really, so I'd like to put some USE flags here to show 
> what I want, or not want to build.
> 
> A quick scan through the use flags show no real consistency, so here's what I 
> propose
> 
> USE client server
> client - just build the client - duh
> server - just build the server - duh
> client and server OR neither then build both.
> 
> Other packages to possably beneift
> udhcp
> mldonkey
> samhain
> bacula
> boxbackup
> 
> Interestingly, many packages have a server USE flag but not a client one - 
> maybe make both a global USE flag?
> 
> Good idea? Bad idea? Thoughts?

(Yeah, I know, repeating our IRC conversation.)

Bug #12499

The truth is that we don't ever want to become like the binary
distributions.  We don't want to have to have separate
client/server/common/devel as it removes many of the advantages that
Gentoo has.  The default should *always* be to install the package as it
was intended from upstream, completely intact.  Now, it has started to
become a practice to have a "minimal" USE flag on certain packages that
reduces the functionality to the bare client portion.  I see no real
problem with this, so long as the default is to always build/install the
full package.

That's my $0.02 on the matter.

-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering - Strategic Lead
x86 Architecture Team
Games - Developer
Gentoo Linux