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

[Mike Gilbert <floppym@gentoo.org>]

On Fri, Feb 9, 2024 at 12:17 PM Michael Orlitzky <mjo@gentoo.org> wrote:
>
> 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.

In most cases I have seen, it makes more sense to toggle the behavior
at runtime rather than disabling functionality at build time.

Exposing build flags for stuff that can be toggled at runtime is added
complexity for little benefit. It sometimes even makes maintaining the
ebuild and dependent packages more difficult.