Re: [gentoo-dev] USE="gui"

[hasufell <hasufell@gentoo.org>]

On 09/12/2015 01:52 AM, Daniel Campbell wrote:
> On 09/11/2015 01:34 PM, hasufell wrote:
>> I already use IUSE=gui and will keep doing that.
> 
>> USE flags in gentoo are the best and the worst thing at the same
>> time. They are also mostly the main reason people don't like
>> gentoo, because USE flags are (for todays situation) pretty much
>> not an appropriate pattern to reflect real-world configuration. To
>> be more precise... USE flags are first-class citizens and there is
>> only one layer of them. There's not configuration
>> pattern/abstraction behind them. If you wonder what I am talking
>> about, have a look at NixOS. The reason we lack proper declarative
>> configuration is also the reason we had to introduce this ugliness
>> called REQUIRED_USE. Instead of saying "gui.gtk" we say 
>> "REQUIRED_USE="gui? ( || (  gtk ... ) )". And it will get worse. I 
>> wonder when people start realizing that.
> 
> 
> So are you suggesting maybe we come up with namespaced USE flags? That
> would be interesting.
> 

I'm not sure we can do that without breaking gentoo. At least, it would
be a _huge_ EAPI change.

It would require a lot of PM work, would break our configuration format
(if you want to do it properly) and probably have other side effects for
running systems.

And if you have followed NixOS development... you know that you can
screw this up as well, because consistency is even more important if you
really want declarative configuration. And I'm not sure there is enough
interest in consistency in gentoo. People seem to be fine with micro
managing USE flags in order to achieve a particular configuration state
which can break arbitrarily on any update.