[gentoo-dev] Re: Dirt: To shove under the rug or not shove under the rug? (aka another round of USE_EXPAND)

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

Diego 'Flameeyes' Pettenò posted
<200509271242.05438@enterprise.flameeyes.is-a-geek.org>, excerpted below, 
on Tue, 27 Sep 2005 12:41:50 +0200:

> Saying for example that kdelibs uses kernel_linux can make people think that 
> kdelibs works ONLY for Linux kernel, while that's not true at all.

I see your point on most of your post, but this simply doesn't ring true.

What is one of the PRIMARY things that is drilled into the user's heads in
all the documentation, forums, lists, etc, concerning USE flags?  Is it
not that they configure for OPTIONAL factors, that non-optional
dependencies are merged unconditionally, so that USE flags have no effect
on them?

I agree that USERLAND and the like shouldn't be changed by an ordinary
user under ordinary circumstances.  use.force and the like could be very
useful in this sort of situation, particularly since who knows /what/ sort
of vars a user may have set up in his environment, quite apart from
portage use, and these could do /very/ /bad/ things to emerges (which is,
I believe, one of Jason's points, we need to either make users  aware of
these or isolate portage from normal vars that might have unintended
consequences, failure to do so is a QA issue). 

However, were an ebuild to spit out kernel_linux among the USE flags and
the like, anybody that takes it as you suggest they might, that it works
ONLY for the  Linux kernel, can be said to know little enough about
portage and how it works, specifically about how it treats optional vs
non-optional dependencies, that they are a danger to themselves and the
system they are attempting to maintain!  Anybody NOT understanding that
USE flags (and USE_EXPAND if we start displaying that as well) govern
optional, NOT hard dependencies, while trying to work with portage, is
ALREADY a danger to his system, to the point he shouldn't be making
decisions about merges and the like in the /first/ place, because he
doesn't understand enough about the process to do it in a logically
coherent manner, and should REALLY spend a bit more time with the docs (or
away from the booze or whatever may be clouding his judgement), before he
starts emerging stuff.

So... for these sorts of things, I'd say treat them like build and 
boostrap, display them, but document the consequences of messing with them
equally well.

-- 
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 in
http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2004/12/22/rms_interview.html


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