Re: [gentoo-dev] Unmasking modular X

[Jason Stubbs <jstubbs@gentoo.org>]

On Wednesday 25 January 2006 16:19, Donnie Berkholz wrote:
> Jason Stubbs wrote:
> > Only by modifying every ebuild that has a virtual/x11 dependency. The atom 
> > "virtual/x11" cannot be limited to specific versions on its own with old 
> > style virtuals.
> 
> Is that so? I guess this must be wrong, then:
> 
> /usr/portage/profiles/base/virtuals:# Only have this for >=pam-0.78, as
> we want to make use of the 'include'
> /usr/portage/profiles/base/virtuals:virtual/pam
> >=sys-libs/pam-0.78

Yep, portage simply removes the >= and 0.78 parts and makes all versions of 
sys-libs/pam a provider of virtual/pam. Why there is no warning I don't know.

> > The premise for not doing this is that packages will never be fixed, 
> > right? Why not make the modular X provide virtual/x11 and just institute a 
> > policy that no new packages can go into stable with a virtual/x11 
> > dependency? It could even be easily enforcable if necessary.
> 
> How does that fix the stale, unmaintained here and upstream apps that
> are in stable now and have no ~arch ebuilds?

It wouldn't, but at least there'd be fewer packages to deal with in the final 
cleanup. It was just an innocent question though; as far as I can tell, 
emerging any application (ported or not) on a clean system will not break 
even after modular X is unmasked. It's a fine line between whether packages 
"needlessly" not working together due to incompatible (deep) dependencies is 
considered breakage or not though...

/me steps away from the flames for fear of getting burned.

--
Jason Stubbs
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list