Re: [gentoo-dev] [FRC] News item: Changing USE flags for >=app-backup/bacula

[tomjbe@gentoo.org]

Quoting Rich Freeman (2017-08-15 14:16:14)
> On Tue, Aug 15, 2017 at 5:19 AM,  <tomjbe@gentoo.org> wrote:
> > Quoting Michał Górny (2017-08-15 08:43:07)
> >> On wto, 2017-08-15 at 06:55 +0200, tomjbe@gentoo.org wrote:
> >> > Quoting Rich Freeman (2017-08-15 00:29:19)
> >> > >
> >> > > I guess to make it a bit more explicit, would it make sense to have 3 flags:
> >> > >
> >> > > client - install the client   (or consider calling it file-daemon instead)
> >> > > director - install the director
> >> > > storage-daemon - install the storage daemon
> >> > >
> >> >
> >> > That would be best, but it is not supported by their (autoconf based) build
> >> > system (and would require a complete rewrite of it). The actual USE flags
> >> > mostly mirrors the switches from the configure script. You can not set them as
> >> > you like, they are not orthogonal E.g. the file deamon (client) will be
> >> > installed unconditionally.
> >> >
> >> > The configure script itself is very brittle atm and needs an urgent overhaul.
> >> > Discussion with upstream goes a long way, but they do not want to change it
> >> > because of the need to retest it on very different systems. No good situation.
> >> >
> >> > A possible idea may be to drop the 'no/client' flag completely. If neither
> >> > 'director' nor 'storage-daemon' is active all that is left would be the
> >> > file daemon.
> >> > What do you think?
> >>
> >> WFM. If the flag doesn't do anything except for disabling the two other
> >> flags, then there's no place for such a flag.
> >>
> > And here comes the problem. USE="bacula-nodir bacula-nosd" does not produce
> > the same set of files as USE="bacula-clientonly". But I will recheck if the
> > difference is of relevance for normal gentoo user.
> 
> It is probably worth understanding the difference.  However, if the
> user sets both -director and -storage-daemon you could also enable
> bacula-clientonly, unless there is some reason somebody might want two
> of those and not the third.
> 
I just tested the different use flags settings as well as directly the
different configure switches. Here is what happens for configure:

* Deactivation of storage-daemon drops the related files.
* Deactivation of director ist ignored by the build system, the director is
  build anyway (One more bug in their build system).
* Activation of clientonly drops both the related files for director and for
  storage daemon.

The ebuild does fix some of the differences:

* +bacula-nodir and +bacula+nosd drops most of the files for these
  functionality, but keeps some more (mostly irrelevant) files over
  +bacula-clientonly.

So from gentoos point of view having nodir and nosd is nearly the same as
having clientonly. That would allow to drop the clientonly flag and keep only
the controling flags for director and storage-daemon.
> >
> >> >
> >> > The downside of that idea is that we diverge from baculas documentation which
> >> > explicitly state that there is a 'clientonly' install.
> >> >
> >>
> >> Upstream install documentation is not relevant to Gentoo. The flag
> >> descriptions in metadata.xml are.
> >>
> > Right. But if we drop a "clientonly" than there is no hint in metadata.xml how
> > to get only the file daemon alone. Some einfo output or similar come to mind.
> >
> 
> You could use einfo.  However, if the docs say what the other two
> flags do then it seems pretty obvious that if you turn them both off
> you end up with only the file daemon.
> 
I think we can find a proper formulation for the use flag description in
metadata.xml, e.g.:

director - Installs the backup director additional to the default file daemon.
storage-daemon - Installs the storage daemon additional to the default file
daemon.

Thomas