>>>>> On Mon, 24 Jul 2017, Mike Gilbert wrote:

>> The flag also pulls in additional dependencies for some ebuilds.
>> So I wonder how it could be made unconditional? For example,
>> app-admin/eselect[vim-syntax] depends on app-vim/eselect-syntax
>> which in turn will pull in vim or gvim. Certainly not all users
>> would want that?

> I was unaware that the USE flag sometimes introduces additional
> dependencies. That being the case, we should certainly keep it.

A quick scan shows that about 100 ebuilds in the tree have such a
USE-conditional dependency.

>> Similarly, if we get rid of the vim-syntax flag, should we phase
>> out the emacs USE flag, too?

> Does this also pull in optional dependencies?

Yes, most of the time it does.

Also, last time I had a (non-Emacs) package unconditionally install
Emacs support, there were complaints by "religious" users who wanted
to keep their systems 100% Emacs free. ;-)

Ulrich