[gentoo-dev] USE flags and your annoyances

[gentoo-dev] USE flags and your annoyances

[Seemant Kulleen]

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Hi All,

I was just reading through a thread on USE flags spawned by the "dvd" flag used in mplayer.  First off, it doesn't seem like the documentation has been read.  That said, let me summarise:

emerge -qvp mplayer will show you all the USE flags which apply to it.  Those that have a "+" sign in front are flags you enabled, or have been enabled in the default profile.  The "-" sign should be obvious, given the above info.

The fact that you go through the ./configure options yourself is a good thing, as maybe you'll catch stuff the developers didn't and will report additional or obsolete options.  However, to completely disregard USE, which imho, is a mechanism that makes Gentoo so great, defeats the purpose of having a meta-distribution which allows fine grained tweaking.

As for which packages make use of which USE flags and for what purposes: I am redoing the USE howto, and hope to have that sort of thing extensively documented.  If anyone has productive ideas about how to improve it, please let us know. No offense, but bitching about things and making empty complaints is just trollbait.



-- 
Seemant Kulleen
Developer and Project Co-ordinator,
Gentoo Linux					http://www.gentoo.org/~seemant

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Re: [gentoo-dev] USE flags and your annoyances

[Terje Kvernes]

Seemant Kulleen <seemant@gentoo.org> writes:

  [ ... ]

> As for which packages make use of which USE flags and for what
> purposes: I am redoing the USE howto, and hope to have that sort of
> thing extensively documented.  

  the bottom line here is that the documentation needs to be read.
  make a _good_ point of this in the install-docs, pointing to the
  USE-docs and saying "_read this_" might help.

> If anyone has productive ideas about how to improve it, please let
> us know. No offense, but bitching about things and making empty
> complaints is just trollbait.

  indeed.  USE is a great feature of Gentoo.  

-- 
Terje

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Re: [gentoo-dev] USE flags and your annoyances

[Fernand Albarracin]

Hi,

On Thu 10 Apr 2003 at 14:36:45 -0700, Seemant Kulleen wrote:

> As for which packages make use of which USE flags and for what
> purposes: I am redoing the USE howto, and hope to have that sort of
> thing extensively documented.  If anyone has productive ideas about
> how to improve it, please let us know. No offense, but bitching about
> things and making empty complaints is just trollbait.

Please don't forget to mention the "-*" trick. I don't think it is
documented right now, I just saw it in an earlier mail from Martin
Schlemmer.

Fernand

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Re: [gentoo-dev] USE flags and your annoyances

[Abhishek Amit]

On 14:36 Thu 10 Apr     , Seemant Kulleen wrote:
> Hi All,
> 
> I was just reading through a thread on USE flags spawned by the "dvd" flag used in mplayer.  First off, it doesn't seem like the documentation has been read.  That said, let me summarise:
> 
> emerge -qvp mplayer will show you all the USE flags which apply to it.  Those that have a "+" sign in front are flags you enabled, or have been enabled in the default profile.  The "-" sign should be obvious, given the above info.
> 
> The fact that you go through the ./configure options yourself is a good thing, as maybe you'll catch stuff the developers didn't and will report additional or obsolete options.  However, to completely disregard USE, which imho, is a mechanism that makes Gentoo so great, defeats the purpose of having a meta-distribution which allows fine grained tweaking.
> 
> As for which packages make use of which USE flags and for what purposes: I am redoing the USE howto, and hope to have that sort of thing extensively documented.  If anyone has productive ideas about how to improve it, please let us know. No offense, but bitching about things and making empty complaints is just trollbait.
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Seemant Kulleen
> Developer and Project Co-ordinator,
> Gentoo Linux					http://www.gentoo.org/~seemant
> 
> Public Key: http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x3458780E
> Key fingerprint = 23A9 7CB5 9BBB 4F8D 549B 6593 EDA2 65D8 3458 780E
One question I have about USE flags is what the policy is on binary
software with some optional functionality achived through additional
binaries. Should a USE flag be used to toggle the installaiton of these
binaries or should they just be installed? I know, this is not the user
side of the issue but thought this was an appropriate place to ask.


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