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What's the benifit of using gentoo?
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Hypnos
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PostPosted: Fri Jun 29, 2012 12:28 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

John R. Graham wrote:
It's not, "Just not true," only because you can hack the ebuild. It's also just not true because the USE flag mechanism is most typically used to directly expose the package's build options. When you make a USE flag change, you're selecting from the configurability the package author exposed. Gentoo is just the friendly middleman, making it easy.

While the coverage of compile-time options by USE flags is impressive, it is not complete. Moreover, quite often USE flags are used not for compile-time options but for pulling in optional dependencies. So I would say USE flags have a broader scope than just exposing upstream configurability, and this entails some design decisions by the ebuild maintainers.

That said, I usually agree with their decisions, and if I don't they can almost always be remedied by per-package USE flag settings. Currently the ebuilds duplicated in my local overlay are only for applying patches not yet integrated by upstream.
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anb.clarke
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PostPosted: Fri Jun 29, 2012 3:43 pm    Post subject: Re: What's the basic difference between Gentoo and Slackware Reply with quote

:?

Last edited by anb.clarke on Mon Jul 02, 2012 2:26 pm; edited 2 times in total
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John R. Graham
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PostPosted: Fri Jun 29, 2012 3:58 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hypnos wrote:
While the coverage of compile-time options by USE flags is impressive, it is not complete. Moreover, quite often USE flags are used not for compile-time options but for pulling in optional dependencies. So I would say USE flags have a broader scope than just exposing upstream configurability, and this entails some design decisions by the ebuild maintainers.

That said, I usually agree with their decisions, and if I don't they can almost always be remedied by per-package USE flag settings. Currently the ebuilds duplicated in my local overlay are only for applying patches not yet integrated by upstream.
Well, yes, which is why I said, "most typically." However, in the vast majority of the cases, if you pull in an optional dependency, isn't that done just to meet the requirements of a compile-time option?

I usually agree with the developer's decisions on scope of USE flag control as well. :wink:

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Thistled
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PostPosted: Fri Jun 29, 2012 7:27 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

In reply to the initial question.

THE POWER!

The power to control the world!

Mwha-ha-ha.

Sorry.
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yngwin
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PostPosted: Sun Jul 01, 2012 5:28 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hypnos wrote:
While the coverage of compile-time options by USE flags is impressive, it is not complete.

If there is anything missing that you need, please file a bug.

Hypnos wrote:
Moreover, quite often USE flags are used not for compile-time options but for pulling in optional dependencies.

Strictly spoken, that is an abuse of useflags (unless it's a meta ebuild). Optional runtime dependencies should not trigger a rebuild of the package, which is what happens when you change the useflag settings. The recommended practice is to mention these optional packages in an elog message. There are currently several proposals being discussed which should offer a better solution.
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yngwin
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PostPosted: Sun Jul 01, 2012 5:37 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

disi wrote:
Hypnos wrote:
disi wrote:
I push from time to time this one: https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=396253
But it never makes it into portage as it looks like :(

I guess beandog is too busy to deal with it. I think the devs are generally good at maintaining ebuilds for software that's important to many users (e.g., core system, desktop environments), and then everything else depends on personal interest and free time.

To get more focused support, you can maintain your own overlay (by yourself or with friends using a VCS), or you can interact with the maintainers of the Gentoo overlays.


Thanks, I will certainly have a look but I don't think overlays are the answer to broken packages in portage...
http://znurt.org/search.php?search=&q=makemkv&x=0&y=0

Indeed overlays are not the answer to broken packages in portage — unless no maintainer can be found and the package is removed from the portage tree.

In this case another developer has already volunteered to take over, so I will re-assign this issue to him. If nothing gets done within a week, please contact me and I will take care of it personally.
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