Re: [gentoo-dev] special small-files USE flag without effect on dependencies: [ unicode ]

[Michael Orlitzky <mjo@gentoo.org>]

On Fri, 2024-02-09 at 11:57 -0500, Mike Gilbert wrote:
> 
> Based on this pkgcheck issue, this originates from a decision from by
> Gentoo QA team.
> 
> https://github.com/pkgcore/pkgcheck/issues/414#issuecomment-1213057268
> 

Thanks for the dig. I agree with the reasoning for things like
USE=bash-completion and USE=vim-syntax, where the added complexity of a
flag is not justified to avoid installing small files. In those cases,
the additional files simply don't do anything if you don't (for
example) use vim.

USE=unicode and USE=ipv6 are different beasts. In many cases they
directly and immediately change the behavior of the package. I think
that there are good reasons to want those two disabled, but the user's
reasoning shouldn't really matter. The only "problem" in this case is
the pkgcheck warning. Upstream supports it, the maintainer supports it,
it works, users might want it, and it's one of our selling points.
Given all of that, I'm leery of treating it like some kind of mistake.