Re: [gentoo-dev] Interest Check: Dynamic config files for portage

[Kumba <kumba@gentoo.org>]

Hmmm, Pondering this thread leads me to a few opinions of my own.  One, 
I have to sway away from splitting make.conf into multiple files.  I 
kinda like only having to tweak one file to alter the settings of the 
one system wide feature of Gentoo that makes it Gentoo -- Portage.

Breaking this up into multiple files I think would anger the user base. 
  Honestly, it's not that complex of a file.  And I rather like the 
large comment blocks that explain various features and settings of 
portage.  More information, the better, I always say.

Maybe if make.conf was in the format of a sendmail config file, 
something like this might be more warranted.  Users who don't want to 
have the comment blocks can simply delete them, and etc-update after 
merging a new portage takes very little time.  IMHO, I'd say this is 
extremely trivial right now.

On the other hand, perhaps some small changes could be made.  I do think 
the USE variable is just pointless.  There are *way* too many use flags, 
and setting these manually in make.conf is self-defeating.  Better to 
train people to make use of "ufed" to set the USE settings, and keep 
that file separate from make.conf, say /etc/env.d/useflags.

Other suggested changes are removing variables that affect tools outside 
portage, such as distcc and ccache.  They have their own userland tools 
to configure them.  At most, a comment block in make.conf, or more 
preferably, a note in the man page for these might be better.

Otherwise, I don't see much of a point to change the make.conf file.  I 
think it serves it's purpose well, and centralizes things nicely.  I 
think alot of the tools available for Gentoo outside of 'emerge' and 
'ebuild' should also be centralized in some form, like ufed, 
mirrorselect,  etc.., either by being merged into a single utility, or 
individually called from a central utility.

Just food for thought.


--Kumba

-- 
"Such is oft the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world: 
small hands do them because they must, while the eyes of the great are 
elsewhere."  --Elrond


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