Re: [gentoo-dev] Guidelines for IUSE defaults

[Dirkjan Ochtman <djc@gentoo.org>]

On Thu, Feb 2, 2017 at 4:36 PM, Michael Orlitzky <mjo@gentoo.org> wrote:
> I'm not saying that we should have a minimal experience out-of-the-box,
> only that the base profile should result in an effectively-minimal set
> of USE flags. Adding IUSE defaults is essentially adding defaults to the
> base profile. Why does dev-java/icedtea try to pull in GTK (and thus X)
> on a headless server? That stuff belongs in a desktop profile, not in
> the base one.
>
> I don't think minimal should be our default, but it should be
> *possible*. It practically isn't so long as people mix uses #1, #3, and
> #4. I guess I would also be happy if we outlawed use #1 so that USE="-*"
> would be supported. In any case, we should document how to use them.
> Having them mean four different things causes confusion.

Like others, I think that having IUSE defaults as reflecting upstream
makes much more sense, because it makes more sense to put upstream's
nuances in the ebuilds than in some of our profiles. I've run systems
with -* before, and found it to work okay. These days I have a
somewhat more minimal set of disabled USE flags in make.conf, which
seems to work fine for my somewhat-minimal headless server, too.

Anyway, I don't know how prevalent your #1 is, but making -* more
supported seems more attractive to me than the other options.

Cheers,

Dirkjan