From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org ([208.92.234.80] helo=lists.gentoo.org) by finch.gentoo.org with esmtp (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1N1Utx-0002rV-Sb for garchives@archives.gentoo.org; Sat, 24 Oct 2009 00:54:38 +0000 Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 2BF63E0960; Sat, 24 Oct 2009 00:54:36 +0000 (UTC) Received: from mailfilter65.ihug.co.nz (mailfilter65.ihug.co.nz [203.109.136.65]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A1BEDE0960 for ; Sat, 24 Oct 2009 00:54:35 +0000 (UTC) X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Filtered: true X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Result: AqEEAH7t4Up2XU9c/2dsb2JhbACBUNgkhD8EiCM X-IronPort-AV: E=Sophos;i="4.44,615,1249214400"; d="scan'208";a="230340805" Received: from 118-93-79-92.dsl.dyn.ihug.co.nz (HELO linux.localnet) ([118.93.79.92]) by smtp.mailfilter1.ihug.co.nz with ESMTP/TLS/DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA; 24 Oct 2009 13:54:33 +1300 From: Alistair Bush Organization: Gentoo Linux To: gentoo-dev@lists.gentoo.org Subject: Re: [gentoo-dev] Amount of useflags enabled by default Date: Sat, 24 Oct 2009 13:55:34 +1300 User-Agent: KMail/1.12.2 (Linux/2.6.31-gentoo; KDE/4.3.2; x86_64; ; ) References: <4AE1E033.3030707@gentoo.org> In-Reply-To: <4AE1E033.3030707@gentoo.org> Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Id: Gentoo Linux mail X-BeenThere: gentoo-dev@lists.gentoo.org Reply-to: gentoo-dev@lists.gentoo.org MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: Text/Plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-Id: <200910241355.35305.ali_bush@gentoo.org> X-Archives-Salt: d39208ec-b0d5-45ad-9dc7-a9af01e5376e X-Archives-Hash: 9b979c6069a8c6cb847e22b3dd72fd80 > Hi, > > i would like to start a discussion about reducing the amount of > default-enabled USE flags in profiles, especially in inherited basic > profiles. Sounds like a reasonable idea to me, for the base profiles at least. > In addition, i see a trend to enabled more more more USE flags (either over > profiles or via IUSE +flag). Whats the reason for forcing a big load of > default enabled USE flags on every user including more dependencies, more > compile time, more wasted disk space and more possible vulnerabilities > except some users, who complain about a missing feature and are not able > to think and enable a USE flag for that feature? > ".... who complain about a enabled feature and are not able to think and disable a USE flag for that feature?" What a couple of changes make.... It would be nice if we actually documented why they were enabled. Does the use flag enable significant functionality that would otherwise make the software less useful. I believe we should be trying to find a nice 'middle of the road' balance. DE "related" use flags should be enabled in profiles ( unless of coarse they package is already DE related e.g if a kde package has a use flag for kde's sound system, this could be enabled at a package level while a package with a kde use flag should not default enable it.). So, if we were looking at what use flags ppl are enabling/disabling we should be seeing similar numbers for the "+'s" and the "-'s". Not an easy thing to do, I admit. Would be interesting if something like Color Graphing [1] or some algorithm could be used to determine whether a use flag should be enabled in a profile (including which profile)/package. Maybe we should have some addition metadata for use flags. Like a category/type/blah/blee. As an example we could have a category of DE containing kde/gnome/etc. How do we know that the dirac use flag is codec related without knowing what dirac is? Alistair [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graph_coloring