On Wednesday, June 22, 2011 11:16:25 justin wrote:
> On 6/22/11 4:47 PM, Andreas K. Huettel wrote:
> > Am Mittwoch 22 Juni 2011, 16:35:07 schrieb Matthew Summers:
> >> One thing to note is that a few various python modules, like numpy,
> >> really benefit from fortran. While many people using numpy are
> >> scientists, many are not and further there are various modules that
> >> depend on numpy that non-science folks use. I, for one, care little
> >> about where that flag is set, since I have manually set that USE for
> >> years now in make.conf. I am simply hoping to make you aware of the
> >> fact that there are potential cases that could be easily overlooked.
> > 
> > ... and there are also typical end user software packages like digikam
> > and kipi-plugins for photo processing, which rely e.g on opencv for face
> > recognition, red eye removal, ...
> 
> So then,
> 
> lets make a clear decision how we should handle the fortran USE.
> 
> 1. leave it as it is as global USE enabled.
> 
> 2. enable it as default for gcc
> 
> 3. let package maintainers fix their packages,
> means depend on fortran by default where it is the best and/or needed

(3) needs to be done regardless of anything else.  default settings doesnt 
prevent people from disabling fortran on their systems and then hitting a 
broken build.

if (3) is done, does it really need to be a global flag anymore ?
-mike