Re: [gentoo-dev] tinfo flag

[konsolebox <konsolebox@gmail.com>]

On Wed, Dec 7, 2016 at 1:23 PM, Michał Górny <mgorny@gentoo.org> wrote:
> On Tue, 6 Dec 2016 20:11:34 -0600
> William Hubbs <williamh@gentoo.org> wrote:
>
>> On Tue, Dec 06, 2016 at 05:26:19PM -0500, Mike Gilbert wrote:
>> > On Tue, Dec 6, 2016 at 4:15 PM, Michał Górny <mgorny@gentoo.org> wrote:
>> > > On Tue, 6 Dec 2016 12:54:26 -0500
>> > > Mike Gilbert <floppym@gentoo.org> wrote:
>> > >
>> > >> On Mon, Dec 5, 2016 at 6:13 AM, konsolebox <konsolebox@gmail.com> wrote:
>> > >> > Please consider promoting the use of tinfo flag in packages that
>> > >> > depend on sys-libs/ncurses so that they would synchronize properly
>> > >> > with sys-libs/ncurses[tinfo].
>> > >>
>> > >> I would rather see the tinfo USE flag removed from ncurses.
>> > >
>> > > vapier doesn't consider this QA violation a QA violation.
>> > >
>> > > https://bugs.gentoo.org/487844
>> >
>> > Perhaps QA could take some action then?
>> >
>> > Updating ~1500 ebuilds with a [tinfo=] use-dep seems like a poor solution.
>>
>> <qa hat on>
>> Our policies are in the dev manual, so please cite the violation there.
>> If you can't, this is not a qa violation, so please don't call it one.
>> </qa hat>
>>
>> I don't see a problem with the use flag and suggest updating the other ebuilds.
>
> The flag randomly changes ABI, breaking all reverse dependencies.
> Please tell me this is a good practice.

And there you had just proven that the ncurses package is installed in
two modes, showing that a flag like tinfo is needed to represent them.
It's not the ncurses package's fault.  It's the depending packages'
responsibility to properly adapt to it.

Basically you're suggesting to drop either of those modes.  Now I'm
asking, would one of those (likely tinfo mode) be workable in all
packages?  Do you find that it would cause less issues than this
solution?  And I'm talking about end-user issues, not ebuild
implementation issues.

I find that forcing depending packages to follow that mode sounds
worse than what you claim a QA violation.

-- 
konsolebox