[gentoo-user] USE flags information resource

["Alan E. Davis" <lngndvs@gmail.com>]

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After about a year of using Gentoo, I am very pleased.  Not being a
programmer, I do tend to spend alot of time on that learning curve.  It has
become more and more apparent in the past couple of months that USE flags
really *are* as fantastic as they are cracked up to be, in at least one
way---they enable the tuning of each package within whatever parameters are
available for that package.  Nothing even close to that is available on
other distros I have used (well, slackware had at least emacs-nox, I
guess).

Like my 4 year old son, I learn about the system by pounding on keys.  I
have always tended to tank up on caffeine before an install session, and
install everything I can get my hands on.   Some of them wouldn't work, but
that was just, as I understood, the law of probability in action.  I have
been getting wiser and wiser at fixing broken merges, and often it has
required to take some time, read the output, and reinstall some dependency
with a USE flag enabled or disabled.  I have been learning to take it slow
in installing packages, check out the situation before doing the actual
merge itself.  This is just as important as the docs said, despite my hurly
burly approach.

I have had it in mind to post about this, but now I think I have a
suggestion that may be useful:

I wiki about USE flags would be extremely useful.  Am I the only one, or are
newbies the only ones who encounter USE flags with cryptic significance?
The descriptions from euse, profuse, etc., are a bit of a help alot of the
time; however, some use flags would bear some serious explanation!   Is
something now available that would provide this functionality?  I am not
wise to the world of wikis (my sole attempt to edit wikipedia was a dismal
failture, even though I am pretty literate in LaTeX); however I would be
willing to put something simple together with some help.

Alan

-- 
Alan Davis, Kagman High School, Saipan  lngndvs@gmail.com     1-670-256-2043

I consider that the golden rule requires that if I like a program I must
share it with other people who like it.
                                          --------Richard Stallman

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