[gentoo-dev] USE flags and static libs

[Alexander Holler <holler@ahsoftware.de>]

Hi,

I like brainstorming. ;)

I've mentioned it before as a remark in another msg, I would find it nice 
to have a USE flag tests mentioned in the documentation. This could inspire 
some developers to call 'make tests' or similiar before installing if 
something is provided by the makefile of the package.

I also want to discuss the building of static libs. Right now all or most 
of the static libs are build with the flags from make.conf. The problem 
with that is that this prevents building binaries (which uses them) to give 
away (or for using on other machines). E.g. a binary build with march=i686 
won't run on k6.

This could lead to some 'hard to find' problems if someone forgets this.

I've two aproaches to this problem:

1. Building all static libs without march flags.

2. Introduce a USE flag i386static
This could be used to build additional static libs with a postfix i386. 
E.g.
libncurses.a and libncurses_i386.a.

I would prefer the second approach. Like the USE flag 'tests', just 
describing it in the appropriate developer docs could be enough to get that 
into (some) future ebuilds.

Comments?


Regards,

Alexander