Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: linux-firmware

["Diego Elio Pettenò" <flameeyes@flameeyes.eu>]

On 20/02/2013 17:45, Alec Warner wrote:
> We could add something like PROPERTIES="network" to packages that
> require the network. I'm vaguely sure for instance, that some
> src_test() phases require a functioning network to work properly.

This has been proposed a bunch of times before, and I still wish to see
it implemented.

On the other hand, even for those that currently require network for
src_test, if there was a quick opt-out, I foresee trouble: quite a few
times it's possible to test 90% (figurative number) of a library without
network, you just need to take the time to disable the network-bound
tests (eventually giving upstream a patch to enable/disable the network
side, or to ignore network failures instead of consider them a FAIL —
versus getting the wrong response which _is_ a FAIL).

Having non-masked ebuilds rely on network access also makes it extremely
hard to do things such as isolated builds (for embedded/firmware-style
OSes), and by experience would make the whole tinderboxing effort nearly
unfeasible — for sure I would shut down both the tinderboxes as I'd be
debugging network issues more often than actual problems with
tinderbox/packages.

> linux-firmware[non-free] <- the use flag to toggle between free and
> non-free licenses.
> linux-firmware-noredist <- This one is RESTRICT="fetch mirror"

+1 — It requires some work from someone to actually split the stuff
manually though, and there is at least one problem: somebody _got_ to
redist the firmware for it to be fetched.. unless.

But yes, the first obvious solution is, when snapshotting the
repository, to just drop the noredist files, and add the above-suggested
USE flag for the non-free ones.

-- 
Diego Elio Pettenò — Flameeyes
flameeyes@flameeyes.eu — http://blog.flameeyes.eu/