Re: [gentoo-dev] USE & Portages

[Jerry A! <jerry@thehutt.org>]

On Mon, Jan 15, 2001 at 09:29:48AM -0700, drobbins@gentoo.org wrote:
: On Mon, Jan 15, 2001 at 03:32:16AM -0500, Jerry A! wrote:
: 
: > So, I was thinking (yeah, I know how dangerous that is).  Is it possible
: > to specify USE on the command-line?  If not, how out-of-place would it
: > be to specify USE in the .ebuild?
: 
: Right now, you can't specify USE as an environment variable, it's not really
: intended for that purpose.  You're supposed to use it to tell Portage to 
: enable or disable certain optional functionality on a system-wide basis, so that
: the ebuilds know whether or not to compile-in optional GNOME support if it
: is available, for instance.
: 
: Maybe if you can describe the specific problem you're trying to solve, we
: can help you find a better solution (or create a solution if needed).

What I'm looking for is optional functionality of a portage-specific
basis.

For instance, instead of having exim, exim-ldap, postfix, postfix-tls,
etc... ebuilds which may or may not get out of sync (like the qmail ones
currently are), I'd like to have one portage.  In that portage or
through the use of a command-line variable have the user choose what
options they want (tls, mysql, ldap, etc...).  Or, at the very least
have a USE= line in the ebuild that they can edit to suit their tastes.

If this isn't possible, then I suggest adding options like: mta-tls,
mta-mysql, mta-ldap, etc... to /etc/make.defaults and /etc/make.conf.

My only reservation for this is that we may eventually run into MTAs
that don't support all the functionality.  But then again, that can be
solved, so maybe I'm making a mountain out of a molehill.

Anyway, let me know how you'd like me to proceed.

        --Jerry

name:  Jerry Alexandratos         ||  Open-Source software isn't a
phone: 703.599.6023               ||  matter of life or death...
email: jerry@akopia.com           ||  ...It's much more important
                                  ||  than that!