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

[Mark Knecht <markknecht@gmail.com>]

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?

Thanks,
Mark

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