Hi,

currently we have a lot of packages in the portage tree that provide
both server and client implementations of a package, big things like
mysql and samba but also small stuff like telnet-bsd. Often people don't
need the server part of these packages, but currently there is no way to
disable them. Some packages have splitted the package, but this is IMO
not a good idea in general, as often the ebuilds are the same except for
one or two commands.
So my idea (as well as others) is to add a new "server" USE flag that
controls wether the server part of a package is build. This idea is
outlined in more details on bug 12499, which also had the idea of a
"client" USE flag, so that it's possible to only build the libs or only
the server, however I think that such a flag will create more problems
than benefits (see the bug for explanations).
So, I'd like to get some opinions/comments from people on this idea, as
this is coming up about every month and there wasn't really any action
to solve this issue.

Marius

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