[gentoo-dev] USE flag: gui or X?

[gentoo-dev] USE flag: gui or X?

[Andrey Grozin]

Hello *,

I have a trivial question. I'm now working on the asymptote ebuild. 
asymptote has an optional gui - a separate python program xasy using pyqt5 
and interacting with asy. From time immemorable, the USE flag controlling 
it was called X. Should I rename it to gui?

Can a pyqt5 program (like xasy) run on wayland? I never used wayland, and 
have no idea (though I heard that qt programs can run on wayland). If xasy 
can run on wayland, then the USE flag name X is misleading, and should be 
replaced by gui.

Opinions, please.

Andrey

Re: [gentoo-dev] USE flag: gui or X?

[Filip Kobierski]

On Thursday, February 20th, 2025 at 14:15, Andrey Grozin <grozin@gentoo.org> wrote:

> Hello *,
> 
> I have a trivial question. I'm now working on the asymptote ebuild.
> asymptote has an optional gui - a separate python program xasy using pyqt5
> and interacting with asy. From time immemorable, the USE flag controlling
> it was called X. Should I rename it to gui?
> 
> Can a pyqt5 program (like xasy) run on wayland? I never used wayland, and
> have no idea (though I heard that qt programs can run on wayland). If xasy
> can run on wayland, then the USE flag name X is misleading, and should be
> replaced by gui.
> 
> Opinions, please.
> 
> Andrey

Hi Andrey,

PyQt are Python bindings for the Qt GUI toolkit.
That means that the question you're asking is "Should a QT app
have USE=gui or USE=X for enabling the graphical user interface?".
In that case I think the answer is obvious: it should be USE=gui.

> I heard that qt programs can run on wayland

Plasma 6 runs on wayland by default and it's apps are using Qt
so yeah, Qt can run on wayland.

Small FYI: If you are within a Wayland session, to check
if an app runs on wayland you can call xprop from the command line 
an click on the window. If nothing happens, it's Wayland.
If output gets printed to the terminal, it's X.

Regards
Filip

Re: [gentoo-dev] USE flag: gui or X?

[Andrey Grozin]

On Thu, 20 Feb 2025, Filip Kobierski wrote:
> PyQt are Python bindings for the Qt GUI toolkit.
> That means that the question you're asking is "Should a QT app
> have USE=gui or USE=X for enabling the graphical user interface?".
> In that case I think the answer is obvious: it should be USE=gui.
Thanks. I also thought so.

> Small FYI: If you are within a Wayland session, to check
> if an app runs on wayland you can call xprop from the command line
> an click on the window. If nothing happens, it's Wayland.
> If output gets printed to the terminal, it's X.
I use lumina as my desktop environment, it is X11 only. So, I'm not in 
wayland.

Andrey

[gentoo-dev] Re: USE flag: gui or X?

[Duncan]

Andrey Grozin posted on Thu, 20 Feb 2025 13:15:46 +0000 (UTC) as
excerpted:

> I have a trivial question. I'm now working on the asymptote ebuild.
> asymptote has an optional gui - a separate python program xasy using
> pyqt5 and interacting with asy. From time immemorable, the USE flag
> controlling it was called X. Should I rename it to gui?
> 
> Can a pyqt5 program (like xasy) run on wayland? I never used wayland,
> and have no idea (though I heard that qt programs can run on wayland).
> If xasy can run on wayland, then the USE flag name X is misleading, and
> should be replaced by gui.

So your question was answered (gui), but I'm looking at that pyqt5 and 
thinking...

pyqt *5*?  What's upstream's story on pyqt6 support?  Kinda weird to have 
a new major version still stuck on qt5.  Is it even worth the time's-
ticking flag and dep or will it just need removed in a few months when the 
last pyqt5 revdeps are cleaned up?

(Maybe upstream's working on it and this asymptote-3.0 release as 
mentioned in the earlier thread is a temporary stop-gap until they've 
finished stabilizing the qt6 version?  In which case, probably worth 
keeping the flag and dep for now to avoid the disruption.  But then the 
3.0 major version stuck on qt5 is even more weird.)

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: USE flag: gui or X?

[Andrey Grozin]

On Thu, 20 Feb 2025, Duncan wrote:
> pyqt *5*?  What's upstream's story on pyqt6 support?  Kinda weird to have
> a new major version still stuck on qt5.  Is it even worth the time's-
> ticking flag and dep or will it just need removed in a few months when the
> last pyqt5 revdeps are cleaned up?
I see no traces of such activity upstream. I've filed an issue to their 
github issue tracker. Let's see what they will reply.

There are *very* many useful programs using Qt5. For example, I'm using 
lumina desktop environment. I'm afraid there will be many such useful 
programs for many years...


Andrey