[gentoo-dev] Re: Unified nVidia Driver Ebuild ready for testing

[Peter <pete4abw@comcast.net>]

On Wed, 28 Dec 2005 01:06:43 +0100, Pawe Madej wrote:

> In my opinion if you want to build monolitic ebuild in system like
> gentoo where everything is going to be modular you should try some local
> USE flags for example monolitic to install all the stuff you are puting
> into it and of cours flags for every part which could be istalled
> independly.
> 
> As a common user i need only nvidia-kernel and its dependency nvidia-glx
> to be happy.
> 
> Greets
> Pawel Madej

Thanks for your feedback from the user POV. You point out part of the
current problem. glx is NOT a dependency of kernel. So a user who installs
kernel will NOT get glx under the current situation. This will cause
nvidia to fail at startup.

This is because glx has kernel as a dependency. Can't have it both ways
(as someone else here pointed out) because you'd have a circular
dependency...kernel requires glx, but glx requires kernel which requires
glx...and around we go.

As for more USE flags? I would say not a good idea. There are too many of
them already. :)

As for modularity, there comes a time when this goes to an extreme. Adding
closed source libraries (glx) to install along with the kernel source adds
no overhead (one user said 14 seconds to install glx) and provides a
complete solution without compromising any other part of any other
kernel's installation. So users who update a kernel won't be harmed and
everything can coexist. Unmerge will uninstall from the current kernel
path.

I _do_ see the argument that including the extra applications could be
spun off from the main package.

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