Hello everyone,

would someone more competent explain to me, why

- this feature even exists
- why has a mass of things been commited in there recently

?

It's

- confusing users
- rendering /etc/portage/package.keywords useless (install a dep for one
particular ebuild and enjoy the USE flag enabled globally)
- causing unwanted results (I did not really install app-text/recode for the
purpose of enabling USE=recode globally and make it clash with half of php USE
flags e.g.)
- causing pointless breakage/bailing out in current ebuilds for users that have
not touched USE flags on their system at all

Related links:

http://viewcvstest.gentoo.org/viewcvs.py/gentoo-x86/profiles/base/use.defaults?r1=1.22&r2=1.23
http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=112074
http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=86687#c7

Suggested solution: remove use.defaults feature from portage; meanwhile, stop
adding stuff in there. It gains nothing, just confuses people and breaks
things.

Thanks.

-- 
Best regards,

 Jakub Moc
 mailto:jakub@gentoo.org
 GPG signature: http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0xCEBA3D9E
 Primary key fingerprint: D2D7 933C 9BA1 C95B 2C95  B30F 8717 D5FD CEBA 3D9E

 ... still no signature ;)