Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: [gentoo-core] crap use flags in the profiles

[Brian Harring <ferringb@gentoo.org>]

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On Mon, Aug 29, 2005 at 05:43:35PM -0400, Chris Gianelloni wrote:
<snip>
Re: not shoving work onto you, complicating your job, etc, I agree, 
and actually is what I was getting at in the badly worded section 
below

> > >  My point is pretty simple,
> > > why should we spend a bunch of time maintaining something that is
> > > designed from the start to be customized, and most likely won't even be
> > > used anyway?
> > That's the issue; the profiles in their current form are customizable 
> > only in the ability to negate a collection of flags.
> > Negating the whole beast is another story due to the desktop cruft 
> > being shoved into the arch subprofiles.
> 
> Sorry, but this didn't make a bit of sense to me.  Perhaps you could
> reword it?
Basically stating that if I want the minimal 2005.1 x86 profile to 
build my own server profile off of, I can't really use the existing 
default-linux/x86/2005.1 ;

Why?  Mainly due to the fact that I would be forced to reverse a *lot* 
of stuff, use flags mainly, to get it back down to a minimal profile.  
That's what I mean by lack of customization; it can be done, but it's 
not optimal, vs say inheriting a base default/x86/2005.1 that holds 
just system defaults (pam, cflags, etc).

If I were to implement a server profile from existing, I'd probably 
tag in -* to the use, and add the use flags I explicitly want; that's 
not really the best way to use the profiles inheritance capabilities 
though :)

> > Profile customization occurs, /etc/portage/profiles exists for this 
> > reason; the 2005.1 profile (fex) is probably *rarely* ran exactly as 
> > y'all have it specified considering we do have user level use flags, 
> > tweaking the hell out of '05.1.
> 
> You would be surprised at the number of people that use GRP and rarely,
> if ever, change their USE flags.  I wish I had numbers, but I don't.
> 
> Anyway, the default set of USE flags seems to be a pretty perfect mix
> for most people.  It gives packages that work as expected, and is geared
> toward a desktop system.  Without any more specific examples of what
> you're trying to point out, I'm just not seeing it.
Key thing to note, neither of us have figures :)
Beyond that, I'm not after castrating the defaults that exist, I'm 
after sticking a level of indirection, a subprofile into the releng 
profile inheritance chain so that if I *want* a minimal profile (as 
you use), I can get it without having to resort to -* and tracking all 
of the changes myself.

It's a time saving effort; add multiple inheritance in, and it's easy 
to do (win/win).

> > Aside from mild disagreement on views, as was stated in previous 
> > emails, multiple inheritance I tend to think is required to minimize 
> > the work for y'all; what I want you guys to do (or I'll do myself) is 
> > chunk the suckers up so people after a minimal base for running 
> > it themselves, or building up their own subprofile can do so.  Not 
> > after jamming maintenance nightmares on you, which without multiple 
> > inheritance, might be a bit.
> 
> I know that I won't be spending *my* time making any profile other than
> the defaults used for building the release.  Anyone is welcome to build
> profiles for anything else that they might want, but since the release
> team doesn't use it, we shouldn't be forced to waste our time on it.

Agreed, although I'd posit that when/if multiple inheritance is added, 
y'all take advantage of it (break up the settings into base and 
desktop) so that others can use your base work instead of reinventing 
the wheel.
~harring

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