[gentoo-dev] use.force support

[gentoo-dev] use.force support

[Sven Wegener]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1200 bytes --]

Hi all!

We just had a short discussion over in #gentoo-portage and the idea of
an use.force file for profiles came up. It allows us to force some USE
flags to be turned on for a profile. It's not possible to disable this
flag by make.conf, the environment or package.use. But we would not be
Gentoo, if we don't leave a backdoor. You can disable the flag by
putting -flag in /etc/portage/profile/use.force if you really need to.
Same goes for sub-profiles that need to disable this flag.

This use.force support might be used as an replacement for some
USE_EXPANDs like ELIBC and KERNEL because they are prone to break if the
USE_EXPANDed variable is also set in the environment. Like this:

sven@luna ~ $ KERNEL="foo" emerge --info | grep ^USE=
USE="x86 ... userland_GNU kernel_foo elibc_glibc"

I gues use.force has some other places where it is useful. Like the
default-darwin profiles which use ARCH="ppc" and USE="ppc-macos" but the
ppc-macos flag can be removed by using USE="-ppc-macos" in the
environment. Or selinux profiles, to force the selinux flag to be turned
on.

Comments?

Cheers,
Sven

-- 
Sven Wegener
Gentoo Linux Developer
http://www.gentoo.org/

[-- Attachment #2: Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 189 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-dev] use.force support

[Harald van Dijk]

Just a thought, but how about making use.mask lock flags instead of
forcing them off? Meaning, if use.mask contains ncurses, and
make.defaults contains USE="ncurses", this would have the same effect as
what ncurses in use.force would do. IMO, this would keep things a bit
simpler. But again, just a thought; I don't know if it'd cause any
problems for portage.

Question: with use.force, what happens if a flag is both masked and
forced? Does it get turned on, get turned off, or get portage to
complain and abort?
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] use.force support

[Sven Wegener]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1523 bytes --]

On Mon, Jun 13, 2005 at 06:47:30PM +0200, Harald van D??k wrote:
> Just a thought, but how about making use.mask lock flags instead of
> forcing them off? Meaning, if use.mask contains ncurses, and
> make.defaults contains USE="ncurses", this would have the same effect as
> what ncurses in use.force would do. IMO, this would keep things a bit
> simpler. But again, just a thought; I don't know if it'd cause any
> problems for portage.

I like to have them separate. USE and use.mask are incremental, that
means we might lock (via use.mask) a flag that is not set by the profile
the use.mask is in. This might result in unwanted locking. Considering
we want to use.mask (as in the old meaning, forcing it to be off)
ncurses in the current profile, then we also need to USE="-ncurses" in
the profile to make sure the flag is off and not activated by another
profile. This needs to be done for all flags that should be use.mask'ed
and that are, depending on the profile, quite a lot. Means double
management work. Other solution is to modify portage to evaluate every
use.mask and USE on a per profile level. But that's somehow against the
cascading aspect of the profiles.

> Question: with use.force, what happens if a flag is both masked and
> forced? Does it get turned on, get turned off, or get portage to
> complain and abort?

Good question. I would prefer to turn the flag off and make portage
print a message.

Sven

-- 
Sven Wegener
Gentoo Linux Developer
http://www.gentoo.org/

[-- Attachment #2: Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 189 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-dev] use.force support

[Harald van Dijk]

Sven Wegener wrote:
> I like to have them separate. USE and use.mask are incremental, that
> means we might lock (via use.mask) a flag that is not set by the profile
> the use.mask is in. This might result in unwanted locking. Considering
> we want to use.mask (as in the old meaning, forcing it to be off)
> ncurses in the current profile, then we also need to USE="-ncurses" in
> the profile to make sure the flag is off and not activated by another
> profile. This needs to be done for all flags that should be use.mask'ed
> and that are, depending on the profile, quite a lot. Means double
> management work. Other solution is to modify portage to evaluate every
> use.mask and USE on a per profile level. But that's somehow against the
> cascading aspect of the profiles.

Yeah, I didn't think of that. Good point.

>>Question: with use.force, what happens if a flag is both masked and
>>forced? Does it get turned on, get turned off, or get portage to
>>complain and abort?
> 
> 
> Good question. I would prefer to turn the flag off and make portage
> print a message.

Sounds good enough to me. Just make sure it doesn't get printed for
every package if something gets broken after emerge sync :)
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] use.force support

[Simon Stelling]

Sven Wegener wrote:
> We just had a short discussion over in #gentoo-portage and the idea of
> an use.force file for profiles came up. It allows us to force some USE
> flags to be turned on for a profile. It's not possible to disable this
> flag by make.conf, the environment or package.use. But we would not be
> Gentoo, if we don't leave a backdoor. You can disable the flag by
> putting -flag in /etc/portage/profile/use.force if you really need to.
> Same goes for sub-profiles that need to disable this flag.

Yay!

> I gues use.force has some other places where it is useful. Like the
> default-darwin profiles which use ARCH="ppc" and USE="ppc-macos" but the
> ppc-macos flag can be removed by using USE="-ppc-macos" in the
> environment. Or selinux profiles, to force the selinux flag to be turned
> on.

It'll be also very useful for the amd64 profiles as in 2005.0 the use
flag 'multilib' is disabled but multilib-support is forced. (There are
no-multilib-profiles though.)

> Comments?

I consider use.force very useful, it'll finally make all the amd64 users
stop asking themselves why the documenation says they will get multilib
but the use flag is disabled, so please, go ahead implementing it.

Regards,

blubb

-- 
Simon Stelling
Gentoo/AMD64 Operational Co-Lead
blubb@gentoo.org
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] use.force support

[Dan Meltzer]

Seems like use.force might be a bad name..... when I first read the
email, and saw use.force, the first thing that came to mind was
"gentoo forcing something?" and even after reading the email, I
wouldn't expect to be able to override something that was "forced." 
I'm not sure what a better name would be, but I think there may be
one...

also, wouldn't the override be in use.unforce? >_<

On 6/13/05, Simon Stelling <blubb@gentoo.org> wrote:
> Sven Wegener wrote:
> > We just had a short discussion over in #gentoo-portage and the idea of
> > an use.force file for profiles came up. It allows us to force some USE
> > flags to be turned on for a profile. It's not possible to disable this
> > flag by make.conf, the environment or package.use. But we would not be
> > Gentoo, if we don't leave a backdoor. You can disable the flag by
> > putting -flag in /etc/portage/profile/use.force if you really need to.
> > Same goes for sub-profiles that need to disable this flag.
> 
> Yay!
> 
> > I gues use.force has some other places where it is useful. Like the
> > default-darwin profiles which use ARCH="ppc" and USE="ppc-macos" but the
> > ppc-macos flag can be removed by using USE="-ppc-macos" in the
> > environment. Or selinux profiles, to force the selinux flag to be turned
> > on.
> 
> It'll be also very useful for the amd64 profiles as in 2005.0 the use
> flag 'multilib' is disabled but multilib-support is forced. (There are
> no-multilib-profiles though.)
> 
> > Comments?
> 
> I consider use.force very useful, it'll finally make all the amd64 users
> stop asking themselves why the documenation says they will get multilib
> but the use flag is disabled, so please, go ahead implementing it.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> blubb
> 
> --
> Simon Stelling
> Gentoo/AMD64 Operational Co-Lead
> blubb@gentoo.org
> --
> gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list
> 
>

-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] use.force support

[Kito]

On Jun 13, 2005, at 2:56 PM, Dan Meltzer wrote:

> Seems like use.force might be a bad name..... when I first read the
> email, and saw use.force, the first thing that came to mind was
> "gentoo forcing something?" and even after reading the email, I
> wouldn't expect to be able to override something that was "forced."
> I'm not sure what a better name would be, but I think there may be
> one...
>
> also, wouldn't the override be in use.unforce? >_<

what about just a use.env?

>
> On 6/13/05, Simon Stelling <blubb@gentoo.org> wrote:
>
>> Sven Wegener wrote:
>>
>>> We just had a short discussion over in #gentoo-portage and the  
>>> idea of
>>> an use.force file for profiles came up. It allows us to force  
>>> some USE
>>> flags to be turned on for a profile. It's not possible to disable  
>>> this
>>> flag by make.conf, the environment or package.use. But we would  
>>> not be
>>> Gentoo, if we don't leave a backdoor. You can disable the flag by
>>> putting -flag in /etc/portage/profile/use.force if you really  
>>> need to.
>>> Same goes for sub-profiles that need to disable this flag.
>>>
>>
>> Yay!
>>
>>
>>> I gues use.force has some other places where it is useful. Like the
>>> default-darwin profiles which use ARCH="ppc" and USE="ppc-macos"  
>>> but the
>>> ppc-macos flag can be removed by using USE="-ppc-macos" in the
>>> environment. Or selinux profiles, to force the selinux flag to be  
>>> turned
>>> on.
>>>
>>
>> It'll be also very useful for the amd64 profiles as in 2005.0 the use
>> flag 'multilib' is disabled but multilib-support is forced. (There  
>> are
>> no-multilib-profiles though.)
>>
>>
>>> Comments?
>>>
>>
>> I consider use.force very useful, it'll finally make all the amd64  
>> users
>> stop asking themselves why the documenation says they will get  
>> multilib
>> but the use flag is disabled, so please, go ahead implementing it.
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> blubb
>>
>> --
>> Simon Stelling
>> Gentoo/AMD64 Operational Co-Lead
>> blubb@gentoo.org
>> --
>> gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list
>>
>>
>>
>
> -- 
> gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list
>
>

-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] use.force support

[Sven Wegener]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 245 bytes --]

On Mon, Jun 13, 2005 at 03:40:34PM -0500, Kito wrote:
> what about just a use.env?

I find that a little bit misleading. Sounds like "use this environment"
or so.

Sven

-- 
Sven Wegener
Gentoo Linux Developer
http://www.gentoo.org/

[-- Attachment #2: Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 189 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-dev] use.force support

[Sami Näätänen]

On Monday 13 June 2005 23:54, Sven Wegener wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 13, 2005 at 03:40:34PM -0500, Kito wrote:
> > what about just a use.env?
>
> I find that a little bit misleading. Sounds like "use this
> environment" or so.

How about use.lock, which would lock the listed use flags from normal 
usage.
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] use.force support

[Sven Wegener]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1029 bytes --]

On Wed, Jun 15, 2005 at 01:34:05AM +0300, Sami N??t?nen wrote:
> On Monday 13 June 2005 23:54, Sven Wegener wrote:
> > On Mon, Jun 13, 2005 at 03:40:34PM -0500, Kito wrote:
> > > what about just a use.env?
> >
> > I find that a little bit misleading. Sounds like "use this
> > environment" or so.
> 
> How about use.lock, which would lock the listed use flags from normal 
> usage.

I already had the idea of using use.<whatever> and merge it with
use.mask so that we have one file to force flags on or off for a
profile. That means three operators, "force enable", "force disable" and
"clear settings from parent profiles" but currently the parser works
with just two operator, flag and -flag. So portage would need more
changes here. But after reading the file portage would (assuming the
current code base) split them in two categories, masked flags and forced
flags, so it's easier IMHO to just keep them in two different files.

Sven

-- 
Sven Wegener
Gentoo Linux Developer
http://www.gentoo.org/

[-- Attachment #2: Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 189 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-dev] use.force support

[Kumba]

Sami Näätänen wrote:
> On Monday 13 June 2005 23:54, Sven Wegener wrote:
> 
>>On Mon, Jun 13, 2005 at 03:40:34PM -0500, Kito wrote:
>>
>>>what about just a use.env?
>>
>>I find that a little bit misleading. Sounds like "use this
>>environment" or so.
> 
> 
> How about use.lock, which would lock the listed use flags from normal 
> usage.

Something like this would be useful for some arch profiles (including subarch 
profiles), where we may need to set specialized USE flags.  Like n32 in 
mips/mips64/n32, or cobalt in mips/cobalt, or ip28 in mips/mips64/ip28.  These 
make sure that these specific profiles work as intended, and despite how much 
notice we may put out regarding USE flags in these specific profiles, there is 
always someone out there that will think otherwise and try to disable them, then 
wonder why things break.

I'm all for choice, but a very specific, very limited set of USE flags that need 
to be forced on if using a specific profile would be great.  make.defaults works 
for the most part, but people can override it with USE="-* blah1 blah2 foo bar" 
IIRC.


--Kumba

-- 
Gentoo/MIPS Team Lead
Gentoo Foundation Board of Trustees

"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
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] use.force support

[Sven Wegener]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1620 bytes --]

On Mon, Jun 13, 2005 at 03:56:49PM -0400, Dan Meltzer wrote:
> Seems like use.force might be a bad name..... when I first read the
> email, and saw use.force, the first thing that came to mind was
> "gentoo forcing something?" and even after reading the email, I
> wouldn't expect to be able to override something that was "forced." 
> I'm not sure what a better name would be, but I think there may be
> one...

use.force might not be the best name, but it's what we do with it for
most of our users. Being able to -flag in /etc/portage/profile/use.force
is just because /etc/portage/profile gets added to the cascaded profile
chain.  Everything we add to portage that allows a profile to revert
some behaviour added by parent profiles, can also be done with
/etc/portage/profile and it's good that way. So, that we're able to
-flag in use.force is just part of the way cascaded profiles work. It's
not a feature that will be added just to support use.force. Primary
reason for use.force is to have a way to activate flags even if USE="-*"
is in make.conf or environment.

> also, wouldn't the override be in use.unforce? >_<

No, looking at package.mask in profiles for example, package.unmask is a
level that comes after package.mask. First we mask packages and then we
check if the user want some of them to be unmasked. The actual removing
of a mask can be done with -mask'ing the exact mask in package.mask.
That's rarely used, but that's the way cascading profile work in
portage.

May the force be with you,
Sven

-- 
Sven Wegener
Gentoo Linux Developer
http://www.gentoo.org/

[-- Attachment #2: Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 189 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-dev] use.force support

[Alec Warner]

Sven Wegener wrote:

> use.force might not be the best name, but it's what we do with it for
> most of our users. Being able to -flag in /etc/portage/profile/use.force
> is just because /etc/portage/profile gets added to the cascaded profile
> chain.  Everything we add to portage that allows a profile to revert
> some behaviour added by parent profiles, can also be done with
> /etc/portage/profile and it's good that way. So, that we're able to
> -flag in use.force is just part of the way cascaded profiles work. It's
> not a feature that will be added just to support use.force. Primary
> reason for use.force is to have a way to activate flags even if USE="-*"
> is in make.conf or environment.
How is this not just a consequence of USE="-*"...that is what this does; 
turns off ALL use flags.  How is use.force ( or the concept thereof ) 
not breaking the 'easy' interpretation of USE="-*" because now things 
aren't -*, they are -* + use.force things.

It's one of those "if you use USE="-*" you should know the consequences 
of it...kind of deals.
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] use.force support

[Diego 'Flameeyes' Pettenò]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 638 bytes --]

On Monday 13 June 2005 23:08, Alec Warner wrote:
> How is this not just a consequence of USE="-*"...that is what this does;
> turns off ALL use flags.  How is use.force ( or the concept thereof )
> not breaking the 'easy' interpretation of USE="-*" because now things
> aren't -*, they are -* + use.force things.
It's exactly what we want to avoid, -* everything can breaks things for 
useflags like uclibc (now replaced by elibc_uclibc) and hardened and so on 
which needs to be enabled *everytime*.

-- 
Diego "Flameeyes" Pettenò
Gentoo Developer (Gentoo/FreeBSD, Video, Gentoo/AMD64)

http://dev.gentoo.org/~flameeyes/


[-- Attachment #2: Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 189 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-dev] use.force support

[Mike Frysinger]

On Monday 13 June 2005 05:27 pm, Diego 'Flameeyes' Pettenò wrote:
> On Monday 13 June 2005 23:08, Alec Warner wrote:
> > How is this not just a consequence of USE="-*"...that is what this does;
> > turns off ALL use flags.  How is use.force ( or the concept thereof )
> > not breaking the 'easy' interpretation of USE="-*" because now things
> > aren't -*, they are -* + use.force things.
>
> It's exactly what we want to avoid, -* everything can breaks things for
> useflags like uclibc (now replaced by elibc_uclibc) and hardened and so on
> which needs to be enabled *everytime*.

and is the EXACT reason we have the 'nocxx' USE flag instead of 'cxx' ... if 
we put 'USE=cxx' into profiles' make.defaults, people who have USE=-* will 
get a broken gcc

and no matter how much i'd like to close bugs generated in that case with "NOT 
MY FAULT YOU HAVE A STUPID CONFIGURATION FILE YOU TOOL", i feel like that 
would probably not be too friendly
-mike

-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] use.force support

[Jan Kundrát]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 444 bytes --]

Mike Frysinger wrote:
> and is the EXACT reason we have the 'nocxx' USE flag instead of 'cxx' ... if 
> we put 'USE=cxx' into profiles' make.defaults, people who have USE=-* will 
> get a broken gcc

Well, if you really consider setting USE=-* to cause so much harm, then
if you introduce the "cxx" USE flag, lot of people will realise that as
well, so you'll make them a favour, in fact :-).

-jkt

-- 
cd /local/pub && more beer > /dev/mouth

[-- Attachment #2: OpenPGP digital signature --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 189 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-dev] use.force support

[Sven Wegener]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2092 bytes --]

On Mon, Jun 13, 2005 at 05:08:09PM -0400, Alec Warner wrote:
> Sven Wegener wrote:
> 
> >use.force might not be the best name, but it's what we do with it for
> >most of our users. Being able to -flag in /etc/portage/profile/use.force
> >is just because /etc/portage/profile gets added to the cascaded profile
> >chain.  Everything we add to portage that allows a profile to revert
> >some behaviour added by parent profiles, can also be done with
> >/etc/portage/profile and it's good that way. So, that we're able to
> >-flag in use.force is just part of the way cascaded profiles work. It's
> >not a feature that will be added just to support use.force. Primary
> >reason for use.force is to have a way to activate flags even if USE="-*"
> >is in make.conf or environment.
>
> How is this not just a consequence of USE="-*"...that is what this does; 
> turns off ALL use flags.  How is use.force ( or the concept thereof ) 
> not breaking the 'easy' interpretation of USE="-*" because now things 
> aren't -*, they are -* + use.force things.
> 
> It's one of those "if you use USE="-*" you should know the consequences 
> of it...kind of deals.

There are some USE flags that must survive the -* thing and already do
it. One of them being ARCH, which is always there. And the USE_EXPANDed
ones, the current important being being userland_*, kernel_* and elibc_*
which are needed for special dependencies and checks. They are not to be
modified by users by using USE in make.conf or the environment. They
depend on the chosen profile and should always be enabled. We're not
talking about every day USE flags, but really special USE flags, like
multilib, selinux or the USE_EXPANDed ones that *must* be turned on for
the chosen profile. Don't think of them like every day USE flags that
allow you to tweak your system, they are used to pass some information
from profiles to the ebuilds in a way portage can easily handle it.

Hm, use.must sounds bad once I think about it more.

Sven

-- 
Sven Wegener
Gentoo Linux Developer
http://www.gentoo.org/

[-- Attachment #2: Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 189 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-dev] use.force support

[Alec Warner]

Sven Wegener wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 13, 2005 at 05:08:09PM -0400, Alec Warner wrote:
> 
>>Sven Wegener wrote:
>>
>>
>>>use.force might not be the best name, but it's what we do with it for
>>>most of our users. Being able to -flag in /etc/portage/profile/use.force
>>>is just because /etc/portage/profile gets added to the cascaded profile
>>>chain.  Everything we add to portage that allows a profile to revert
>>>some behaviour added by parent profiles, can also be done with
>>>/etc/portage/profile and it's good that way. So, that we're able to
>>>-flag in use.force is just part of the way cascaded profiles work. It's
>>>not a feature that will be added just to support use.force. Primary
>>>reason for use.force is to have a way to activate flags even if USE="-*"
>>>is in make.conf or environment.
>>
>>How is this not just a consequence of USE="-*"...that is what this does; 
>>turns off ALL use flags.  How is use.force ( or the concept thereof ) 
>>not breaking the 'easy' interpretation of USE="-*" because now things 
>>aren't -*, they are -* + use.force things.
>>
>>It's one of those "if you use USE="-*" you should know the consequences 
>>of it...kind of deals.
> 
> 
> There are some USE flags that must survive the -* thing and already do
> it. One of them being ARCH, which is always there. And the USE_EXPANDed
> ones, the current important being being userland_*, kernel_* and elibc_*
> which are needed for special dependencies and checks. They are not to be
> modified by users by using USE in make.conf or the environment. They
> depend on the chosen profile and should always be enabled. We're not
> talking about every day USE flags, but really special USE flags, like
> multilib, selinux or the USE_EXPANDed ones that *must* be turned on for
> the chosen profile. Don't think of them like every day USE flags that
> allow you to tweak your system, they are used to pass some information
> from profiles to the ebuilds in a way portage can easily handle it.
> 
> Hm, use.must sounds bad once I think about it more.
> 
> Sven
> 
I'm probably a little behind here, since this has been used for a while, 
but I guess more discussion and ideas are good.

It seems like this is an abuse of USE flags, somewhat.  I guess programs 
could have support for elibc_X or elibc_Y or userland_GNU or 
userland_DARWIN/BSD but why a USE flag for these?  If they must be 
forced, force them in the environment outside of USE flag usage.  USE 
flags are for turning off optional support for programs, that is their 
overall purpose.  There isn't a use flag for kernel version, there is a 
function for that.  Why is there not a function to determine 
userland/arch/libc?

In this case I think this use.force deal will create more complexity in 
the USE flag area than help.  This is not what use flags are for ( also 
for multilib and SELINUX ).
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] use.force support

[Diego 'Flameeyes' Pettenò]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1359 bytes --]

On Tuesday 14 June 2005 19:46, Alec Warner wrote:
> It seems like this is an abuse of USE flags, somewhat.  I guess programs
> could have support for elibc_X or elibc_Y or userland_GNU or
> userland_DARWIN/BSD but why a USE flag for these?
Because sometimes we must disable some dependency depending on the libc or the 
userland or the kernel used.

> There isn't a use flag for kernel version, there is a
> function for that.  Why is there not a function to determine
> userland/arch/libc?
Actually there's a variable for them but as said above, variables aren't 
allowed to change the deps. And there are quite a few dependencies which are 
needed just on some systems.
Another thing is use_enable and use_with functions, takes for example kdelibs 
ebuild which has a $(use_enable kernel_Linux dnotify) as dnotify support is 
only for Linux kernels.

It's true that the forced flags shouldn't show up on emerge -pv output (at 
least for base ones, other which can be optional on some arch and forced on 
others can always show up, take for example nopie/nossp which are going to be 
forced on Gentoo/FreeBSD (I actually was working on a similar use.force file 
before so I already have this done locally).

-- 
Diego "Flameeyes" Pettenò
Gentoo Developer (Gentoo/FreeBSD, Video, Gentoo/AMD64)

http://dev.gentoo.org/~flameeyes/


[-- Attachment #2: Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 189 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-dev] use.force support

[Sven Wegener]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 4558 bytes --]

On Tue, Jun 14, 2005 at 01:46:22PM -0400, Alec Warner wrote:
> Sven Wegener wrote:
> >On Mon, Jun 13, 2005 at 05:08:09PM -0400, Alec Warner wrote:
> >
> >>Sven Wegener wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>>use.force might not be the best name, but it's what we do with it for
> >>>most of our users. Being able to -flag in /etc/portage/profile/use.force
> >>>is just because /etc/portage/profile gets added to the cascaded profile
> >>>chain.  Everything we add to portage that allows a profile to revert
> >>>some behaviour added by parent profiles, can also be done with
> >>>/etc/portage/profile and it's good that way. So, that we're able to
> >>>-flag in use.force is just part of the way cascaded profiles work. It's
> >>>not a feature that will be added just to support use.force. Primary
> >>>reason for use.force is to have a way to activate flags even if USE="-*"
> >>>is in make.conf or environment.
> >>
> >>How is this not just a consequence of USE="-*"...that is what this does; 
> >>turns off ALL use flags.  How is use.force ( or the concept thereof ) 
> >>not breaking the 'easy' interpretation of USE="-*" because now things 
> >>aren't -*, they are -* + use.force things.
> >>
> >>It's one of those "if you use USE="-*" you should know the consequences 
> >>of it...kind of deals.
> >
> >
> >There are some USE flags that must survive the -* thing and already do
> >it. One of them being ARCH, which is always there. And the USE_EXPANDed
> >ones, the current important being being userland_*, kernel_* and elibc_*
> >which are needed for special dependencies and checks. They are not to be
> >modified by users by using USE in make.conf or the environment. They
> >depend on the chosen profile and should always be enabled. We're not
> >talking about every day USE flags, but really special USE flags, like
> >multilib, selinux or the USE_EXPANDed ones that *must* be turned on for
> >the chosen profile. Don't think of them like every day USE flags that
> >allow you to tweak your system, they are used to pass some information
> >from profiles to the ebuilds in a way portage can easily handle it.
> >
> >Hm, use.must sounds bad once I think about it more.
> >
> >Sven
> >
> I'm probably a little behind here, since this has been used for a while, 
> but I guess more discussion and ideas are good.
> 
> It seems like this is an abuse of USE flags, somewhat.  I guess programs 
> could have support for elibc_X or elibc_Y or userland_GNU or 
> userland_DARWIN/BSD but why a USE flag for these?  If they must be 
> forced, force them in the environment outside of USE flag usage.  USE 
> flags are for turning off optional support for programs, that is their 
> overall purpose.  There isn't a use flag for kernel version, there is a 
> function for that.  Why is there not a function to determine 
> userland/arch/libc?

As Diegeo already wrote in his mail, the USE_EXPANDed ELIBC and KERNEL
are also available as variables, but as variables we can't use them to
enable or disable optional dependencies for specific kernels or libcs.
Currently only USE flags are able to do it. I just had a quick look into
our handbook[1] and it mentions the following definition for an USE
flag:

"Such a flag is a keyword that embodies support and
dependency-information for a certain concept."

And for sure, elibc_uclibc or kernel_linux stand for a certain concept.
Same goes for multilib and selinux you mentioned further down in your
mail. And they might have special dependency information and need
special treatment in packages. IMHO they match the definition of USE
flags just like any other USE flag we have. Even though, as I wrote in
my previous mail, they are special, because they are not to be set or
unset by users. You chose to activate them by chosing your profile.
With use.force we're just making sure that they are actually enabled. We
can give elibc_* or kernel_* another name, but in the end, they will
serve the same purpose as USE flags and will be handled by portage in
the same way.

> In this case I think this use.force deal will create more complexity
> in the USE flag area than help.  This is not what use flags are for (
> also for multilib and SELINUX ).

I don't see the complexity here. We're just creating a couple of files
in our profiles that force some flags to be turned on.

Sven 

[1] http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml?part=2&chap=2#doc_chap1_sect2

-- 
Sven Wegener
Gentoo Linux Developer
http://www.gentoo.org/

[-- Attachment #2: Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 189 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-dev] use.force support

[Ned Ludd]

On Mon, 2005-06-13 at 16:40 +0200, Sven Wegener wrote:
> Hi all!
> 
> We just had a short discussion over in #gentoo-portage and the idea of
> an use.force file for profiles came up. It allows us to force some USE
> flags to be turned on for a profile. It's not possible to disable this
> flag by make.conf, the environment or package.use. But we would not be
> Gentoo, if we don't leave a backdoor. You can disable the flag by
> putting -flag in /etc/portage/profile/use.force if you really need to.
> Same goes for sub-profiles that need to disable this flag.
> 
> This use.force support might be used as an replacement for some
> USE_EXPANDs like ELIBC and KERNEL because they are prone to break if the
> USE_EXPANDed variable is also set in the environment. Like this:
> 
> sven@luna ~ $ KERNEL="foo" emerge --info | grep ^USE=
> USE="x86 ... userland_GNU kernel_foo elibc_glibc"


I'm in favor of this. Would you mind calling it package.autouse, 
package.use.auto or are you set on .force?

> I gues use.force has some other places where it is useful. Like the
> default-darwin profiles which use ARCH="ppc" and USE="ppc-macos" but the
> ppc-macos flag can be removed by using USE="-ppc-macos" in the
> environment. Or selinux profiles, to force the selinux flag to be turned
> on.
> 
> Comments?
> 
> Cheers,
> Sven
> 
-- 
Ned Ludd <solar@gentoo.org>

-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] use.force support

[Mike Frysinger]

On Monday 13 June 2005 06:56 pm, Ned Ludd wrote:
> Would you mind calling it package.autouse,
> package.use.auto or are you set on .force?

the 'auto' and 'use' gets confusing with use.defaults (the so called 'auto-USE 
flags')
-mike
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] use.force support

[Sven Wegener]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 631 bytes --]

On Mon, Jun 13, 2005 at 06:56:43PM -0400, Ned Ludd wrote:
> I'm in favor of this. Would you mind calling it package.autouse, 
> package.use.auto or are you set on .force?

As Mike already wrote those names are too confusing with the automatic
activated USE flags. We already had some suggestions in this thread, but
none of them actually matched the purpose of the file. At least in my
opinion. use.force matches it best, but the "force" part is a quite hard
term. How about use.profile? Because these USE flags are activated or
needed by the profile.

-- 
Sven Wegener
Gentoo Linux Developer
http://www.gentoo.org/

[-- Attachment #2: Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 189 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-dev] use.force support

[Donnie Berkholz]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Sven Wegener wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 13, 2005 at 06:56:43PM -0400, Ned Ludd wrote:
> 
>>I'm in favor of this. Would you mind calling it package.autouse, 
>>package.use.auto or are you set on .force?
> 
> 
> As Mike already wrote those names are too confusing with the automatic
> activated USE flags. We already had some suggestions in this thread, but
> none of them actually matched the purpose of the file. At least in my
> opinion. use.force matches it best, but the "force" part is a quite hard
> term. How about use.profile? Because these USE flags are activated or
> needed by the profile.

How about use.required, since they're required by the profile?

Donnie
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQFCr5dlXVaO67S1rtsRApFKAKC917D/EwbWvRLY4R8uZ5WwcCk5zgCgw1jE
5solEKLmab3YZXV7qehfXSg=
=VfRe
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

[gentoo-dev] Re: use.force support

[Duncan]

Donnie Berkholz posted <42AF9765.8090800@gentoo.org>, excerpted below,  on
Tue, 14 Jun 2005 19:50:13 -0700:

> Sven Wegener wrote:
>> On Mon, Jun 13, 2005 at 06:56:43PM -0400, Ned Ludd wrote:
>> 
>>>I'm in favor of this. Would you mind calling it package.autouse,
>>>package.use.auto or are you set on .force?
>> 
>> As Mike already wrote those names are too confusing with the automatic
>> activated USE flags. We already had some suggestions in this thread, but
>> none of them actually matched the purpose of the file. At least in my
>> opinion. use.force matches it best, but the "force" part is a quite hard
>> term. How about use.profile? Because these USE flags are activated or
>> needed by the profile.
> 
> How about use.required, since they're required by the profile?

Watching the debate so far, I'd say use.lock sounds simplest and most
descriptive to me, with use.required a close second, only because of the
longer extension (.lock is simpler/shorter than .required).

This from the perspective of one who regularly finds himself posting
explanations of various portage workings, both on the amd64 list, and on
my ISP's own list (there's a guy who's just trying out Gentoo, coming from
FreeBSD -- he has some dev experience on FBSD, so he's potentially an
asset to both the FreeBSD herd and the amd64 arch, some time down the
road, tho he's so far not seemed to interested in the Gentoo on FBSD
stuff).  From an explainer's perspective, I agree that .force sounds a bit
harsh, but use.lock is a simple concept to explain, as is use.required,
tho the .required disturbs my aesthetic sense simply because it's too long
to be "short and simple".

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman in
http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2004/12/22/rms_interview.html


-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: use.force support

[Georgi Georgiev]

maillog: 15/06/2005-02:03:21(-0700): Duncan types
...
> tho the .required disturbs my aesthetic sense simply because it's too long
> to be "short and simple".

It's not longer than '.keywords' or '.provided' so it's too late for
aesthetics already.

Anyway, if you like short ones man's best friend, the Thesaurus, came up
with two shorter alternatives -- needed and *vital*.

use.vital a.k.a. "Touch me and your system dies! (evil-smilie)"

-- 
()   Georgi Georgiev   () War doesn't prove who's right, just who's    ()
()    chutz@gg3.net    () left.                                        ()
()  +81(90)2877-8845   ()                                              ()
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

[gentoo-dev] Re: Re: use.force support

[Duncan]

Georgi Georgiev posted <20050615231750.GA19563@lion.gg3.net>, excerpted
below,  on Thu, 16 Jun 2005 08:17:50 +0900:

> use.vital a.k.a. "Touch me and your system dies! (evil-smilie)"

use.vital!!  LOL!  I LIKE!!  Can't get more explicit than that!
 
-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman in
http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2004/12/22/rms_interview.html


-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] use.force support

[Sven Wegener]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1024 bytes --]

On Tue, Jun 14, 2005 at 07:50:13PM -0700, Donnie Berkholz wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
> 
> Sven Wegener wrote:
> > On Mon, Jun 13, 2005 at 06:56:43PM -0400, Ned Ludd wrote:
> > 
> >>I'm in favor of this. Would you mind calling it package.autouse, 
> >>package.use.auto or are you set on .force?
> > 
> > 
> > As Mike already wrote those names are too confusing with the automatic
> > activated USE flags. We already had some suggestions in this thread, but
> > none of them actually matched the purpose of the file. At least in my
> > opinion. use.force matches it best, but the "force" part is a quite hard
> > term. How about use.profile? Because these USE flags are activated or
> > needed by the profile.
> 
> How about use.required, since they're required by the profile?

Sounds good to me. use.required sounds softer than use.force but still
has this "touch me and things may break horribly" bit.

-- 
Sven Wegener
Gentoo Linux Developer
http://www.gentoo.org/

[-- Attachment #2: Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 189 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-dev] use.force support

[Jason Stubbs]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1805 bytes --]

On Wednesday 15 June 2005 20:43, Sven Wegener wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 14, 2005 at 07:50:13PM -0700, Donnie Berkholz wrote:
> > Sven Wegener wrote:
> > > On Mon, Jun 13, 2005 at 06:56:43PM -0400, Ned Ludd wrote:
> > > >I'm in favor of this. Would you mind calling it package.autouse,
> > > >package.use.auto or are you set on .force?
> > >
> > > As Mike already wrote those names are too confusing with the automatic
> > > activated USE flags. We already had some suggestions in this thread,
> > > but none of them actually matched the purpose of the file. At least in
> > > my opinion. use.force matches it best, but the "force" part is a quite
> > > hard term. How about use.profile? Because these USE flags are activated
> > > or needed by the profile.
> >
> > How about use.required, since they're required by the profile?
>
> Sounds good to me. use.required sounds softer than use.force but still
> has this "touch me and things may break horribly" bit.

So use.required it is then. To recap, use.required forces USE flags to be set 
and can only be overridden in a sub-profile. Transition from the current 
USE_EXPAND method is by simply copying the relevant USE flags to the new 
use.required file.

Currently missing from the USE_EXPAND method but what also needs to be done is 
to add the alternative system USE flags to use.mask. Also, this still hasn't 
addressed the QA notices output during merges. For this, I'll add support for 
${PORTDIR}/profiles/use.internal which will list USE flags which can be used 
anywhere without having to be specified in IUSE; that is, they can be used 
with useq, SRC_URI and *DEPEND.

Note, use.internal doesn't and shouldn't cover the normal USE_EXPAND flags. 
I'll cover those shortly in another post.

Regards,
Jason Stubbs

[-- Attachment #2: Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 189 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-dev] use.force support

[Chris Gianelloni]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1225 bytes --]

On Tue, 2005-06-14 at 19:50 -0700, Donnie Berkholz wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
> 
> Sven Wegener wrote:
> > On Mon, Jun 13, 2005 at 06:56:43PM -0400, Ned Ludd wrote:
> > 
> >>I'm in favor of this. Would you mind calling it package.autouse, 
> >>package.use.auto or are you set on .force?
> > 
> > 
> > As Mike already wrote those names are too confusing with the automatic
> > activated USE flags. We already had some suggestions in this thread, but
> > none of them actually matched the purpose of the file. At least in my
> > opinion. use.force matches it best, but the "force" part is a quite hard
> > term. How about use.profile? Because these USE flags are activated or
> > needed by the profile.
> 
> How about use.required, since they're required by the profile?

I like this much better.  It gives the user an obvious sense of the
purpose of the file/USE flags.  It also doesn't give the impression of
"forcing" something on people, but rather to say that "these need to be
here for proper functionality of this profile", which seems to be less
intrusive.

-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering - Strategic Lead/QA Manager
Games - Developer
Gentoo Linux

[-- Attachment #2: This is a digitally signed message part --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 189 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-dev] use.force support

[Jason Wever]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 772 bytes --]

On Mon, 13 Jun 2005 16:40:48 +0200
Sven Wegener <swegener@gentoo.org> wrote:

> We just had a short discussion over in #gentoo-portage and the idea of
> an use.force file for profiles came up.

One feature that would be more useful (in my honest on Tuesdays
opinion) for us arch folks is the ability to mask use flags on a
per-package basis.  Often times use flags will work for 99% of the
packages they are used in, but the other 1% will not.  Currently the
workaround is to just make the ebuild ignore that use flag on that arch,
but there's no real indication to the user that the workaround is
thwarting their use flag preferences (unless the arch monkey is nice
enough to put in some einfo love).

Cheers,
-- 
Jason Wever
Gentoo/Sparc Co-Team Lead

[-- Attachment #2: Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 189 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-dev] use.force support

[Diego 'Flameeyes' Pettenò]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 805 bytes --]

On Tuesday 14 June 2005 04:43, Jason Wever wrote:
> One feature that would be more useful (in my honest on Tuesdays
> opinion) for us arch folks is the ability to mask use flags on a
> per-package basis.
+1 for this, from the Gentoo/FreeBSD team :P

We also have similar problems because sometimes there are supports which just 
works for some packages because the same useflag enables other things we 
can't support.
Just for example, xorg-x11's pam flag load to compilation failures on OpenPAM 
systems (yeah I should work around that but I don't know the server too much, 
also if lately I'm having troubles..) but the rest of the pam support is 
usually ok.

-- 
Diego "Flameeyes" Pettenò
Gentoo Developer (Gentoo/FreeBSD, Video, Gentoo/AMD64)

http://dev.gentoo.org/~flameeyes/


[-- Attachment #2: Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 189 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-dev] use.force support

[Herbie Hopkins]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1643 bytes --]

This is something I've thought about too and I agree that this would be
a useful feature. One possible application of this feature is to
simplify how we handle simd extensions on amd64 (this has been discussed
multiple times). Currently we have the USE flags mmx,sse,3dnow masked on
amd64 because then enable x86 specific assembly in a lot of packages.
Those packages that work on amd64 with the relevent simd extension we
hard-enable on amd64. This has several problems:

1. Users cannot easily disable these features for e.g debugging
purposes.
2. It's not clear to the user that these extensions are being enabled as
emerge -pv shows (-mmx) etc.

Now if we could simply mask the use flags for the packages where it
causes problems and not for the ones that don't we could solve both
these issues.

Herbie.

On Mon, 2005-06-13 at 20:43 -0600, Jason Wever wrote:
> On Mon, 13 Jun 2005 16:40:48 +0200
> Sven Wegener <swegener@gentoo.org> wrote:
> 
> > We just had a short discussion over in #gentoo-portage and the idea of
> > an use.force file for profiles came up.
> 
> One feature that would be more useful (in my honest on Tuesdays
> opinion) for us arch folks is the ability to mask use flags on a
> per-package basis.  Often times use flags will work for 99% of the
> packages they are used in, but the other 1% will not.  Currently the
> workaround is to just make the ebuild ignore that use flag on that arch,
> but there's no real indication to the user that the workaround is
> thwarting their use flag preferences (unless the arch monkey is nice
> enough to put in some einfo love).
> 
> Cheers,

[-- Attachment #2: This is a digitally signed message part --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 189 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-dev] use.force support

[Thomas de Grenier de Latour]

On Mon, 13 Jun 2005 16:40:48 +0200
Sven Wegener <swegener@gentoo.org> wrote:
 
> We just had a short discussion over in #gentoo-portage and the
> idea of an use.force file for profiles came up. It allows us to
> force some USE flags to be turned on for a profile. It's not
> possible to disable this flag by make.conf, the environment or
> package.use. But we would not be Gentoo, if we don't leave a
> backdoor. You can disable the flag by putting -flag in /etc/
> portage/profile/use.force if you really need to. Same goes for
> sub-profiles that need to disable this flag.

Why a file rather than a make.default variable? I'm thinking of
something like REQUIRED_USE, which would behave just like USE and
friends (the so called "incremental" vars in portage). Its
contents could simply be added to USE after all other steps of
there respective "incrementation" (profiles, make.conf, user
env, etc.). And sure there would also be a REQUIRED_USE_EXPAND
var, similar in purpose to the existing USE_EXPAND but targeting
REQUIRED_USE, where important things like USERLAND or ELIBC could
be moved.

Well, i'm not saying that vars are better than files though, the
same can be achieved both ways, so it's just another option to
consider.

(and feel free to replace, in the above, "REQUIRED" by "FORCE",
"IMPORTANT", or any other kind of "DO_NOT_TOUCH"-like prefix)

-- 
TGL.
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] use.force support

[Sven Wegener]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2059 bytes --]

On Wed, Jun 15, 2005 at 12:16:18PM +0200, Thomas de Grenier de Latour wrote:
> On Mon, 13 Jun 2005 16:40:48 +0200
> Sven Wegener <swegener@gentoo.org> wrote:
>  
> > We just had a short discussion over in #gentoo-portage and the
> > idea of an use.force file for profiles came up. It allows us to
> > force some USE flags to be turned on for a profile. It's not
> > possible to disable this flag by make.conf, the environment or
> > package.use. But we would not be Gentoo, if we don't leave a
> > backdoor. You can disable the flag by putting -flag in /etc/
> > portage/profile/use.force if you really need to. Same goes for
> > sub-profiles that need to disable this flag.
> 
> Why a file rather than a make.default variable? I'm thinking of
> something like REQUIRED_USE, which would behave just like USE and
> friends (the so called "incremental" vars in portage). Its
> contents could simply be added to USE after all other steps of
> there respective "incrementation" (profiles, make.conf, user
> env, etc.). And sure there would also be a REQUIRED_USE_EXPAND
> var, similar in purpose to the existing USE_EXPAND but targeting
> REQUIRED_USE, where important things like USERLAND or ELIBC could
> be moved.

The result is the same. I prefer to use files, because they yield better
cvs diff results. Seeing someone change the REQUIRED_USE line involves
looking over the complete line to find the changes. We could split the
line over multiple lines to make it easier, but then we could just use a
flat file. Well we're talking about a couple of flags here, but we don't
know what we'll use these REQUIRE_USE for in the future

> Well, i'm not saying that vars are better than files though, the
> same can be achieved both ways, so it's just another option to
> consider.
> 
> (and feel free to replace, in the above, "REQUIRED" by "FORCE",
> "IMPORTANT", or any other kind of "DO_NOT_TOUCH"-like prefix)

I actually like the required one.

Sven

-- 
Sven Wegener
Gentoo Linux Developer
http://www.gentoo.org/

[-- Attachment #2: Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 189 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-dev] use.force support

[Alec Warner]

Sven Wegener wrote:

>On Wed, Jun 15, 2005 at 12:16:18PM +0200, Thomas de Grenier de Latour wrote:
>  
>
>>On Mon, 13 Jun 2005 16:40:48 +0200
>>Sven Wegener <swegener@gentoo.org> wrote:
>> 
>>    
>>
>>>We just had a short discussion over in #gentoo-portage and the
>>>idea of an use.force file for profiles came up. It allows us to
>>>force some USE flags to be turned on for a profile. It's not
>>>possible to disable this flag by make.conf, the environment or
>>>package.use. But we would not be Gentoo, if we don't leave a
>>>backdoor. You can disable the flag by putting -flag in /etc/
>>>portage/profile/use.force if you really need to. Same goes for
>>>sub-profiles that need to disable this flag.
>>>      
>>>
>>Why a file rather than a make.default variable? I'm thinking of
>>something like REQUIRED_USE, which would behave just like USE and
>>friends (the so called "incremental" vars in portage). Its
>>contents could simply be added to USE after all other steps of
>>there respective "incrementation" (profiles, make.conf, user
>>env, etc.). And sure there would also be a REQUIRED_USE_EXPAND
>>var, similar in purpose to the existing USE_EXPAND but targeting
>>REQUIRED_USE, where important things like USERLAND or ELIBC could
>>be moved.
>>    
>>
>
>The result is the same. I prefer to use files, because they yield better
>cvs diff results. Seeing someone change the REQUIRED_USE line involves
>looking over the complete line to find the changes. We could split the
>line over multiple lines to make it easier, but then we could just use a
>flat file. Well we're talking about a couple of flags here, but we don't
>know what we'll use these REQUIRE_USE for in the future
>
>  
>
I like this a lot better, although I know ferringb hates it ;)
Putting them in a seperate var means USE="-*" doesn't break stuff and 
moves the issue of required
flags to a seperate area.  You could even use a file, if that floats 
your boat.

-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list