Re: Two-level USE-flag system VAR: [gentoo-dev] USE="minimal" for kernel sources

[Thomas de Grenier de Latour <degrenier@easyconnect.fr>]

On Thu, 22 Sep 2005 22:28:35 +0200
Tom Fredrik Blenning Klaussen <bfg-gentoo@blenning.no> wrote:

> Now as for the USE flag system. It has actually become so big
> that it's difficult to use it effectively. I would actually
> suggest that a two level system of USE flags could be employed.
> Something like
> wtk/gtk (Windowing Toolkit / gtk)
> wtk/kde (Windowing Toolkit / kde)

Sounds good on this example, but i'm not sure it would be that easy
and meaningfull on the whole use.desc. I think you would end up
with lot of "this flag should be in that category and not in this
one" discussions (what already happen with packages).  Also, i
would be curious to see the output of an "emerge -pv" on some
highly configurable packages (dev-lang/php comes to mind for
instance), and whether it really improves readibility.

> There could also be another category
> experimental/minimal

If the idea is just to give a "don't use this flag but if you know
what you are doing" warning, then the best imho is simply to
use.mask it in base profile.  And people who know what they are
doing can unmask it from their /etc/portage/profile/use.mask
(syntax is "-flag"). Sure, it should not be named "minimal" in that
case, since "minimal" is not something you want to mask, but rather
"mini-kernel-src" or anything else that sounds like a specific flag.

--
TGL.
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