Re: [gentoo-dev] introspection use flag

[Gilles Dartiguelongue <eva@gentoo.org>]

Le vendredi 06 mai 2011 à 15:18 +0200, Marijn a écrit :
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> On 05/06/11 14:25, Gilles Dartiguelongue wrote:
> > Le vendredi 06 mai 2011 à 10:40 +0200, Marijn a écrit :
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> >> Dear all,
> >>
> >> I was just looking into the meaning of the introspection use-flag and
> >> there are many ebuilds that use it so perhaps it should be globalized,
> >> which would also give us a chance to improve the naming/description.
> >> Current descriptions are:
> >>
> >> Use dev-libs/gobject-introspection for introspection
> >> Enable GObject introspection.
> >>
> >> Currently it is hard to tell which functionality is enabled through this
> >> flag and the meaning of the descriptions for when the flag is off are
> >> even more unclear. Does it mean that introspection will not be used or
> >> will some other way of introspection be used? Either way, perhaps the
> >> people in the know could shed some light on this issue?
> >>
> >> Thanks,
> >>
> >> Marijn
> > 
> > See original thread on this mailing list:
> > 
> > From: 		Arun Raghavan <ford_prefect@gentoo.org>
> > Subject: 	[gentoo-dev] New global USE flag: introspection
> > Date: 		Sun, 20 Jun 2010 20:12:58 +0530 (20/06/2010 16:42:58)
> > Message-ID:
> > <AANLkTimjJIGW6k5vQCX-wryeYy_FPUTQpRN7jmW4xRKN@mail.gmail.com>
> > 
> 
> Thanks for the pointer![1] Having just read that discussion it seems
> that even back then many developers found that the name "introspection"
> is too broad/imprecise. Several alternatives were proposed, like
> gintrospection, gobject-introspection, gir, api-introspection. I think
> any of these would have been better than the current name.

The gnome team agreed to disagree. There is no point in renaming a flag
that is widely used across gnome packages for a single common purpose
and not anywhere else in the tree.

All alternatives are based on a what-if but months later, what-ifs are
still nowhere to be found.

> And what happened to the proposed description:
> 
> introspection: Add gobject-introspection support, allowing for the
> dynamic generation of bindings for various languages
> 
> which at least contains a hint of what the purpose is of this flag? But
> maybe someone can do even better than that now that this technology has
> been in use for a while?

That can be applied, it would of course be easier to manage if the flag
was global.

-- 
Gilles Dartiguelongue <eva@gentoo.org>
Gentoo