Re: [gentoo-user] unison requires Mozilla, doesn't accept Firefox?

[Holly Bostick <motub@planet.nl>]

Mark Knecht schreef:
> On 8/18/05, Daniel Drake <dsd@gentoo.org> wrote:
> 
>>Hi,
>>
>>Mark Knecht wrote:
>>
>>>   I could look at removing the global mozilla flag and using it only
>>>on certain apps, but really I'm wondering why Unison didn't accept
>>>Firefox as a browser and wondering if the ebuild for it, or more
>>>likely evolution-data-server, could be improved in that area.
>>
>>I don't know what unison is, but in most cases you can't just swap out firefox
>>for mozilla.
>>
>>Firefox is a web browser.
>>Mozilla is a web browser (with email client, etc) plus a sofware development
>>kit and relevant development libraries.
>>
>>So even though you are asking "Why does it need mozilla? I have firefox, won't
>>that do?", the answer (in the usual scenarios) is no, as they are very
>>different packages and firefox does not provide a lot of stuff which mozilla does.
>>
>>Hopefully in the future, mozilla will split out the SDK/libraries into a
>>seperate package so that you don't have to install the mozilla
>>webbrowser/emailer/etc.
>>
>>Daniel
> 
> 
> Daniel,
>    Hi. You make a very valid and important point. Thanks.
> 
>    Beyond Mozilla splitting out portions of it's functionality it
> seems to me that, as a pure user type, I have no way of determining
> what a given flag is intending to do when emerge is run. If, for
> instance, there was some query through emerge that told me something
> about what feature a flag was enabling then in this case (possibly)
> we'd see that Unison was depending on Mozilla's mail features, or
> Mozilla's browser features, or Mozilla's SDK. If it told me it was SDK
> then clearly I wouldn't expect Firefox to provide that. If it's a
> browser feature then I think I'd be warranted in asking why it didn't
> accept Firefox.
> 
>    Is this not reasonable?
> 

Not completely. I was going to say, most of the time when one installs a
program, one has some idea of what it does, and thus could hazard a
guess as to what thus-and-so USE flag could be expected to enable.

But in order to say that, I would have to know what unison was, so I
looked it up:

 eix unison
* net-misc/unison
     Available versions:  2.9.1-r1 2.12.0 ~2.13.0
     Installed:           none
     Homepage:            http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/
     Description:         Two-way cross-platform file synchronizer



... and thought I could see no reason why a file-synchronization program
would demand mozilla at all, so I emerge -pv'ed it:

These are the packages that I would merge, in order:

Calculating dependencies ...done!
[ebuild  N    ] dev-lang/ocaml-3.08.1  -latex +tcltk 2,002 kB
[ebuild  N    ] dev-ml/lablgl-1.00  -doc +glut +tcltk 381 kB
[ebuild  N    ] dev-ml/lablgtk-2.4.0  -debug -doc -glade +gnome
-gnomecanvas +opengl +svg 622 kB
[ebuild  N    ] net-misc/x11-ssh-askpass-1.2.2-r1  28 kB
[ebuild  N    ] net-misc/unison-2.12.0  -debug +gtk +gtk2 -static
+threads 821 kB

... and I do have 'mozilla' in my USE flags-- why, I don't know,
actually, but I disable the flag for individual programs, as I don't
want Mozilla, and don't have it installed:

eix mozilla
* app-office/mozilla-sunbird-bin
     Available versions:  [M]0.2 [M]0.2.20050724
     Installed:           none
     Homepage:
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/sunbird.html
     Description:         The Mozilla Sunbird Calendar

* mail-client/mozilla-thunderbird
     Available versions:  1.0.5 1.0.5-r1 1.0.6-r2 1.0.6-r3 1.0.6-r4
     Installed:           1.0.6-r4
     Homepage:            http://www.mozilla.org/projects/thunderbird/
     Description:         Thunderbird Mail Client

* mail-client/mozilla-thunderbird-bin
     Available versions:  1.0.6-r3
     Installed:           none
     Homepage:            http://www.mozilla.org/projects/thunderbird
     Description:         The Mozilla Thunderbird Mail & News Reader

* net-www/kaffeine-mozilla-plugin
     Available versions:  0.2
     Installed:           none
     Homepage:            http://kaffeine.sourceforge.net/
     Description:         The Kaffeine Mozilla starter plugin.

* www-client/mozilla
     Available versions:  1.7.10-r1 ~1.7.10-r2 ~1.7.10-r3 1.7.11
~1.7.11-r1 [M]1.7.11-r2
     Installed:           none
     Homepage:            http://www.mozilla.org
     Description:         Mozilla Application Suite - web browser,
email, HTML editor, IRC

* www-client/mozilla-bin
     Available versions:  1.7.10-r1
     Installed:           none
     Homepage:            http://www.mozilla.org
     Description:         Mozilla Application Suite - web browser,
email, HTML editor, IRC

* www-client/mozilla-firefox
     Available versions:  1.0.6-r2 1.0.6-r3 1.0.6-r4 1.0.6-r5 [M]1.0.6-r6
     Installed:           1.0.6-r5
     Homepage:            http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firefox/
     Description:         Firefox Web Browser

So I don't know what's dragging mozilla in for you-- except that
evolution data server, which I noticed in one of your previous posts,
which does require mozilla, and is enabled these days via the 'eds' USE
flag, which I have explicitly disabled.

But even eds doesn't seem to be dragged in via the unison emerge; I
certainly don't see any 'eds' USE flag on any of the dependencies.

Ultimately, I'm questioning whether unison is in fact the culprit
here.... you might want to disable the 'eds' USE flag for gnome-panel,
if that's the real bad guy here, as Christoph suggested.

Holly
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