On Sun, 24 Apr 2011 16:58:23 -0500 William Hubbs wrote: > I feel that the current approach (using INSTALL_MASK) to control > whether these configuration files are installed or not is not well > documented. We tell people about it on the mailing lists, but I do > not know of a place where it is documented. > > Also, it seems to be an all or nothing arrangement. If I do not want > logrotate support, I have to set the INSTALL_MASK then if I decide > later I want it, I have to unset the INSTALL_MASK and run "emerge -e > world" to get the files installed. I'm currently working on improving the situation. I'd like to create a tool which would allow users to easily add and remove INSTALL_MASKs (including a few common sets), and rebuild the packages as necessary. This, however, would require some fixes in portage [1]. > I guess the argument against the use flag was that packages were being > rebuilt just to install configuration files. I can see how that could > be a pita for big packages. Did anyone ever bring up using pkg_config > to un/install these files based on the use flags? I don't think that would work. And if it does, then either PM or even PMS is broken by design. The pkg_config() phase should have the same flags set as the build had, or don't refer to flags at all. In addition, upstream-installed config files often require running sed. And this requires unpacking & configuring the package. Really don't seem appropriate for pkg_config(). [1] http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=364633 -- Best regards, Michał Górny