Opinions on package USE flags and KEYWORD unmasking

[Genone]

Hi,

there is currently some discussion at bug 13616 about the file format for package specific USE flags, KEYWORDS and masking. The main difference is if we should use one file for everything or multiple files for each variable. I'll give you an example for both cases:

one file for everything:

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sys-apps/portage
UNMASK=1

x11-libs/wxGTK
USE="-gtk2"
KEYWORDS="~x86"

net-im/gaim
KEYWORDS="~x86"

if we use multiple files, we have the following:

in package.unmask:

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sys-apps/portage

in package.use:

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x11-libs/wxGTK -gtk2

in package.keyword:

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net-im/gaim
x11-libs/wxGTK

I'd like to get some user opinions on the issue: what format do you like more and why ?

[Pythonhead]

I like the idea of separate files. Easy to understand, less chances of the user screwing up the file.

If you write portage utilities it would be much easier to parse any single file than one file with everything in it.

[dma]

You'll need to support the "<net-www/apache-2", etc.

You might have both apache2 and apache1 installed and might want to exclude PHP from the apache2 build for various reasons....

[Genone]

Hmm, there are two different implementations for package.keyword, the one I said and one that support arbitrary keywords, so the example would look like:

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net-im/gaim ~x86
net-irc/xchat ~x86

That solution also supports versions as does the solution for package.use. The package.keyword implementation from my first post does not support versions.

[Genone]

only two opinions for such a requested feature ? Come on, that can't be all ...

[co-D]

I agree that the current state of portage makes it difficult to maintain a mixture of masked and unmasked packages.

Having multiple files such as /etc/portage/package.unmask - /etc/portage/package.mask - as well as the /etc/make.profile/packages, etc. makes it hard to keep track of what is actually taking place. I'd like to see all relevant info in one file, say an entry like

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<media-gfx/sane-backends-1.0.11 --mask
media-sound/alsa-driver --inject
>=media-libs/alsa-lib-0.9.6 --unmask
dev-php/php flash memlimit mysql ldap imap informix curl gd mcal -snmp gd-external innodb

--mask should mask a given build or range thereof;

--unmask should use ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~x86" (for example)for that particular package-version or greater, allowing one to emerge -UD world and not get errors about masked packages or having to emerge everything else as masked packages. In effect, treating that installed version as a stable build.

--inject should also be allowed to be reproduced in upgrades(new releases inject new package replacing old injected build)

USE flags should also persist across updates for specific packages if explicitly stated in this file.

Finally, apart from having this file to edit, i think it would be good to do this automatically on build time, say with something like:

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STICKY_USE="list of flags" STICKY_ACCEPT_KEYWORDS=~x86 emerge --sticky-inject [package list]