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 Wednesday 28 September 2005 00:35, Donnie Berkholz wrote:
> What I have done in my ebuilds using USE_EXPAND is add extra IUSE-like
> variables, for example:
>
> IUSE_VIDEO_CARDS="radeon sis mga"
> IUSE_INPUT_DEVICES="synaptics wacom"
>
> for `use video_cards_sis` etc..
>
> This would allow for possible QA checks. Potentially, portage could look
> through and display things at --verbose like:
>
> [ebuild  N    ] x11-base/x11-drm-20050807 +dga -nls VIDEO_CARDS="+sis
> +mga -radeon" 538 kB [2]

This output is exactly what my patch gives, but it currently works by 
inspecting IUSE. However, it should be possible to indirectly pull the 
information from the above flags instead. Adding support for a 
USE_EXPAND_HIDDEN var should cover USERLAND and friends as well (although 
those would still need to be defined in IUSE_USERLAND="...")

> The main problem with USE_EXPAND right now is that people just don't
> realize it exists, so they don't take advantage of it. We need a way to
> tell them, such as the --verbose output I suggested and some more
> documentation.

This still doesn't cover the discrepencies in behaviour between different 
packages though. How to handle that in the short term? einfo and/or ewarn?

--
Jason Stubbs
-- 
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