Re: [gentoo-user] Rusty problems

["Matt Connell (Gmail)" <matthewdconnell@gmail.com>]

On Tue, 2021-04-27 at 20:53 +0000, Alan Mackenzie wrote:
> I know I could plump for the -bin package.  Maybe I should.

I did, recently. 

Anecdotes/opinions/rant follows.  Feel free to ignore, I just wanted to
vent because the issue is fresh in my mind.

...

Some things just aren't worth building from source.  Rust is so heavy,
convoluted, ill-supported and slow that I just can't be bothered to
spend hours of compile time on getting a slightly-less-awful version of
it for my system(s).  And given how a desktop environment now requires
a Javascript engine to parse configurations (that's a separate
complaint), and spidermonkey requires rust to build, there's no
avoiding it for my needs, so I just cut bait.

The same can be said for GHC (the Glasgow Haskell Compiler).  I can't
do my day-to-day without shellcheck, but spending 8 hours to build a
compiler for shellcheck (and sometimes pandoc) frankly sucks.  This
isn't gentoo's fault, or anyone's fault really.  Languages are complex
and the code to bootstrap compile them isn't easy.  Its above my skill
level, that's for sure.

8+ years of gentoo has taught me many lessons, chief among them is to
pick my battles.  If there is some must-have or must-avoid USE flag, or
a killer feature that's missing from the bin build, then I'll swallow
the pill and take the time to compile it.  If not, I've got better
things to do with my electricity.