Re: [gentoo-dev] Dirt: To shove under the rug or not shove under the rug? (aka another round of USE_EXPAND)

[Jason Stubbs <jstubbs@gentoo.org>]

On Tuesday 27 September 2005 18:38, Diego 'Flameeyes' Pettenò wrote:
> On Tuesday 27 September 2005 11:23, Jason Stubbs wrote:
> > So what needs to be done to fix it? Well, what is the purpose of
> > USE_EXPAND? Put simply, it is to allow the user to select one or more
> > features of a package from a list of choices. How is this different to
> > USE flags? The choices all pertain to one aspect of the package(s).
>
> The way ELIBC, KERNEL, USERLAND are used, is instead something different.
> They don't allow users to select what they want, they allow profiles to
> declare what they are created for.

Which leads me to the one thing I didn't say but feel strongest about.. What 
is the real point of USE_EXPAND? What can/does it do that USE flags do not?

> If some user changes one of these variables, he's *really* screwed up, as
> they change quite a few things in the ebuilds (for example, if kernel is
> not linux, kdelibs doesn't build support for dnotify, gamin for inotify,
> and a few more options in the way).

This doesn't quite apply to cross compiling and such, but in general yeah.

> I think at least these three variables should be hidden from users, as they
> should not mean anything to them.

Similar to "build" and "bootstrap"? Note, these aren't hidden either but if 
the ELIBC and friends should be hidden those should be hidden too.

> In alternative, there was the proposal of a use.force file, that would
> allow to force some flags on and use that instead of the use-expanded
> variables, but currently it doesn't seem to be created and the QA notice
> problem is still not solved, those flags should be forced by some profiles
> and masked by others, as they are not intended to be changed by users.

And we're back to USE flags again... ;)

--
Jason Stubbs

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