[gentoo-dev] Re: berkdb and gdbm in global USE defaults

[Duncan <1i5t5.duncan@cox.net>]

Matt Turner posted on Fri, 27 Jan 2017 10:40:16 -0800 as excerpted:

> On Fri, Jan 27, 2017 at 8:22 AM, Mike Gilbert <floppym@gentoo.org>
> wrote:
>> On Fri, Jan 27, 2017 at 2:54 AM, Mart Raudsepp <leio@gentoo.org> wrote:
>>> Then there is no need to think about what is enabled globally or not.
>>> Point being, use REQUIRED_USE sparingly, and rarely a good idea to
>>> block things with common global USE flags, or demand a local USE flag
>>> based on a default enabled global USE flag without locally USE
>>> defaulting that global flag too - and other such cases.
>>
>> I didn't really mean for this to turn into a thread about the merits of
>> REQUIRED_USE; in hindsight I should have left out that first sentence.
>>
>> Regardless of the REQUIRED_USE discussion, I don't think it makes sense
>> to have berkdb and gdbm in USE in make.defaults. I would like to move
>> them to IUSE defaults or package.use if necessary.
> 
> I think you should feel free to proceed with such a change.
> 
> FWIW, disabling these USE flags (and fortran) are among the first
> changes I made to a new make.conf.

TL;DR: see last sentence/paragraph.

FWIW, changes like that, either at profile upgrade time (with over a 
decade on gentoo on the same system, both hardware and software 
incrementally updated over time, I've done a few of those in my time) or 
worse made arbitrarily to existing profiles, are a big reason I 
ultimately decided USE="-* ..." worked best for me.  Because if I depend 
on the profile to make the decision for me, eventually that decision is 
going to change, and I'll have to dig into what and why and decide what I 
want to do in any case, so it's better to simply deal with all that up 
front, and USE="-* ..." is the way that's done on gentoo.

That way, global changes to my USE flags are only made when I make them, 
and I'll generally know at least the high-level why (say an update from 
qt4/kde4 to qt5/plasma5, with requisite USE flag changes) in that case, 
instead of having to deduce someone else's reason from the git log.  (I 
may still need to research the lower level why qt5/plasma5 require the 
new flags and decide whether I can/want/need to override, via manual 
semantic-desktop patchout or the like, potentially, but that's an 
entirely different focus that unlike global profile default-use changes 
the normal user won't need to deal with.)

Not saying I disagree with the change, but please at least make it a new 
profile only change if at all possible, so as not to disturb existing 
users until they decide to switch profiles, at which point they should be 
expecting at least some level of system adjustment to the new profile.

-- 
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