On 11/03/03  Jason Rhinelander wrote:

> On Mon, 2003-11-03 at 16:17, Donny Davies wrote:
> > Further, you are overloading the intended function of USE variables.
> > Instead of controlling optional build-time functionality, now you
> > are abusing them to control optional install-time bits.
> > 
> > It is not natural to stop at "client" and "server" flags either.
> > What about "dev" for .a and .h things?  This is really going down
> > the slipperly slope in my opinion.
> 
> Not to mention the fact that you could easily want the MySQL server &
> client, but only the Samba client.  Does this mean you'd have to have
> "mysqlserver", "sambaclient", "sambadoc", etc. USE flags?  Or would
> you juggle around with your use flags for various packages, preventing
> you from being able to emerge -u world?  This is actually a greater
> problem- per-package USE flags would be wonderfully USEful (pardon the
> pun) in many other situations.

That's bug 13616, to be included in portage-2.0.50.

> The only logical way I can see to do this is splitting everything up
> into multiple packages, i.e. mysql-server mysql-client, mysql-docs,
> samba-server, samba-client, samba-docs, etc. - and I really dislike
> that approach (I'm against the vim-core/vim/gvim split as well), for
> the reasons mentioned above (and the fact that "updating portage
> cache" after an emerge sync takes long enough as is without shattering
> packages 7 or 8 ways each).

There are several reasons why I'm against package splits:
- redundant code: most times the ebuilds for the subpackages will be
very similar
- maintenance: if a new version is out you have to update n packages
instead of one, if there is a new bug you to fix it in all packages
- space overhead: the portage tree has about 80% filesystem overhead for
most people, coming from a lot of small files (digests, Manifests,
metadata.xml). Each new package makes this worse.
- slower portage: the more packages we have the slower portage will be.
One package won't do much, but a few hundred new packages can make a
noticable difference.

Marius

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