Re: [gentoo-dev] Proposal for advanced useflag-syntax

[Alec Warner <antarus@gentoo.org>]

Enrico Weigelt wrote:
> * Paul de Vrieze <pauldv@gentoo.org> schrieb:
> 
> <snip>
> 
>>> Well, I don't consider reducing complexity "frivolous" ;-o
>> Which reduction for which complexity? Do you want to bring everyone's 
>> systems to a grinding halt, just because you can't understand the 
>> "complexity" of useflags. 
> 
> I just want to keep things simple. We're talking about introducing
> new (additional) logic. This has to be maintained. And it doesn't 
> actually *solve* the problem which is this discussion was started.
> 
> Rember: we started with the thesis, "grandma wants graphical 
> frontends whereever possible". This is in fact not an technical 
> issue, instead a matter of personal taste, or lets say, an individual
> system configuration. Grandma wants to click, okay, so she should 
> use graphical applications. She's not interested what sits behind, 
> she just wants to have a buch of applications. And she also doesn't
> wann have anything to do with emerge and useflags. She just wants
> to have a choice between a bunch of end-user applications. 
> That's the job of an Grandma-(sub-)distro.
> 

Bad example, as Gentoo generally requires knowledge of the system and
the command line interface; unless you think grandma can update her
toolchain properly with no issues.  I don't think anyone at this point
would hand Gentoo to grandma; and I don't think anyone has that goal.
Mostly we just want an easy to maintain system.  See that word,
maintain; generally means the maintainer knows what they are doing.

> Okay, let's say we want to intruduce an meta-useflag for "GUI"
> (although having additional GUIs in the same package as the 
> backend isn't what I consider clean design). If there's just *one*
> than it's easy - just an alias. But what's if we have more ?
> Who makes the decision, which one to take ? Based on what rules ?
> 

The packages maintainer for Gentoo typically makes the choice on how
something is deployed in Gentoo.

>> Useflags are one of the distinguishing features of gentoo. 
> 
> Yes. For optional features. Additional programs aren't features of
> some other program, but additional programs. 

I would gather for many packages that a gui is a optional feature.
Also this is not a hard and fast rule (and was never meant to be).

> 
> <snip>
> 
>> It is also against the gentoo philosophy of offering software the 
>> way upstream provides it.
> 
> Ah, and this philosophy is more important than quality and 
> maintainability ?

This *philosophy* is a core value of gentoo.  That would be like saying
we should build binary packages for everything because it's easier to
maintain and gives us a higher quality distribution.

Pardon my french, but fuck that.

-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list