On Fri, May 26, 2023 at 06:06:46AM +0100, Sam James wrote:
> 
> Ionen Wolkens <ionen@gentoo.org> writes:
> 
> > Primarily intended for use by linux-mod-r1.eclass, which needs
> > a global IUSE to control stripping of kernel modules *before*
> > signatures and compression (alternative would be to simply never
> > strip, but that seem sub-optimal).
> >
> > Originally meant to be USE=modules-strip or similar, but this can
> > have a more general use case when portage does not know how to
> > strip special files properly while the ebuild does.
> >
> > Notable is mingw ebuilds (wine-*, dxvk, vkd3d-proton, mingw64-*).
> > If portage uses x86_64-pc-linux-strip on, e.g. mingw64-toolchain's
> > runtime libraries, then at least the 32bit toolchain ends up broken
> > and cannot compile anything anymore. But then dostrip -x results in
> > unstripped files while we can use x86_64-w64-mingw32-strip in the
> > ebuild potentially saving 60MB+. Currently this is done through
> > USE=debug, but does not feel fully fitting given this isn't about
> > adding debugging paths (or even symbols, or anything) and is merely
> > "do not strip".
> >
> > No USE in ::gentoo currently contain the word "strip" and defining
> > it should not conflict.
> 
> This sounds fine (and a good idea), but we may want some indication
> in the USE flag description (eh), a QA policy to indicate
> it's only for special situations, or some note in the devmanual.
> 
> Can see people getting this wrong and trying to use it in ebuilds
> which would work otherwise. But maybe the "special" in the USE
> description is enough?

This is what I had in mind when I used that word. Didn't want the
description to sound like it's aimed at developers more than users,
but still have something that prevents matching common strip usage.
-- 
ionen