Re: [gentoo-dev] berkdb and gdbm in global USE defaults

[Kent Fredric <kentnl@gentoo.org>]

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On Fri, 27 Jan 2017 09:32:23 +0100
Fabian Groffen <grobian@gentoo.org> wrote:

> I'm interested to hear how other people feel about this.

Yeah. Pretty much my reaction to 

Mart Raudsepp <leio@gentoo.org> wrote:

> The maintainer should be giving the choice of both,
> but if only one can be chosen, the maintainer should make the choice
> for you by preferring one of them. Likely gdbm, given berkdb licensing
> saga.

Brought the same question to me:

If the design is intended to force your hand when you have both, what is indeed
the point of a REQUIRED_USE feature at all?

If "choose a useflag for the user" is something that is happening, it should
at least be *visible* to the user that this is happening, not being a silent
decision that didn't allow the user to have any say in the matter.

What if the feature you chose instead, was contrary to the one they wanted?

If anything, I think this is a suggestion that *maybe* we should a way to
specify a mechanism for allowing a default to be chosen from a mutually
exclusive set, and then:

a. Inform the user via pretend output that this automatic conflict reduction
   has been performed

b. Define a portage option that disables automatic conflict resolution for
   required USE, so users who hate (a) can turn it off.


But as it stands, Mart's suggestion of "Hey, just don't use required use,
decide for the user" stands essentially as a regression against portage itself.

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