Idea: Gnome-light -> gnome with gnome specific use-flags

Zredna · n00b Joined: 14 Apr 2005 Posts: 4

Hi!
I noticed that alot of people who installs gnome-ligt usually does it only because of a few gnome apps they do not need (in my case epiphany - that also depends on huge mozilla), so I was thinking if it would not be better to replace gnome-light with a few gnomespecific use-flags; like fx 'gnomeepiphany' or 'gnomeevolution'. Of course all of them should default to being enabled.

I already looked at little on the .ebuild-format, and as far as I could tell it should be quite possible and easy to implent by placing fx an 'gnomeepiphany? ( )' around the epiphany dependency.

I think that makes alot more sence. I do not want gnome-light plus most of the gnome-apps. I want gnome without epiphany.
Another problem is I do not want to miss any features, but at the same time I do not want to bloat my system. Right now I have installed gnome-light plus the things I need and yet when I do an 'emerge -pv gnome' some things I have no clue what is shows up. I do not want to just emerge them, because what if they are replaced in a latter version of gnome? Then I would still have them in my world-file - my world-file is for the things that I specifically want, and that is gnome without epiphany.

What does everybody else think?

diastelo · Guru Joined: 23 Feb 2004 Posts: 521

I actually think this sounds like a bad idea. USE flags were primarily there to enable optional features, not optional programs. For me at least, I make the instant logical connection that a USE flag is roughly analogous to passing in options to ./configure. For a USE flag to actually block or enable programs themselves from being built doesn't make sense.
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psyqil · Advocate Joined: 26 May 2003 Posts: 2767

Why don't you just copy it into your overlay and remove the epiphany line? Or tell the gnome devs their desktop doesn't need a browser...

Zredna · n00b Joined: 14 Apr 2005 Posts: 4

diastelo:
Yeah, but gnome is not an program and there is not any configure script; gnome is an meta-package - a bunch of dependecies - and all current use-flags that can be passed on to the gnome-ebuild only changes dependencies. Also you could say that the use-flags would be used to disable features of the gnome desktop.

I did not mean for the use-flags to block for the program, but only to change the dependencies of the gnome meta-package.

psyqil:
Sure! This was not an supportrequest. Actually 5 mins ago I just emerged gnome and decided to live with a few programs I do not use installed. But still think it would be a cool feature.

diastelo · Guru Joined: 23 Feb 2004 Posts: 521

My point is that it should be more generic. The Gnome meta-package shouldn't have an evolution requirement. It should have a mail client requirement. Or a browser client flag. For example, the Gnome office suite is a set of individually developed programs combined loosely under a single category (Abiword, Gnumeric, etc). Gentoo chooses to install them separately, but I'm sure at least one disto will package them together.
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"No question is so difficult to answer as that to which the answer is obvious" -- George Bernard Shaw

tfh · n00b Joined: 03 Aug 2004 Posts: 59 Location: AFAD

Drysh · Posted: Fri May 27, 2005 9:48 pm Post subject:

I found something to help with this using what portage gives us. Adding the -mozilla use flag, the evolution package doesn't ask for mozilla. I like evolution, but I don't want to install the mozilla suite only for this. But adding -mozilla to make.conf makes some things behave strangely with firefox. Take a look at https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-2446910.html#2446910 Now I can use evolution without mozilla, and still have everything working with firefox.

About epiphany... I'm still trying to figure out how to exclude it.

Drysh · Posted: Fri May 27, 2005 10:00 pm Post subject:

I have no idea what this is, but I found an use flag that makes gnome forget about epiphany: mips. Add +mips to make.conf use flags and you won't have epiphany.

BTW... WTF is mips? I never saw it before, and profuse tells me it doesn't exist. But it exists.. And it works.

TrueDFX · Retired Dev Joined: 02 Jun 2004 Posts: 1348

Don't add mips to your flags. It means that you're on a mips comuter, similarly to how x86 means you're on an x86 computer. It may add mips-specific patches to some packages and completely break your system this way (that shouldn't normally happen, but it's not impossible). The arch-specific flags are not shown in profuse/ufed/emerge -pv for a good reason. Also, once mozilla and epiphany work on mips (assuming they some day do), this "flag" will no longer cause it to be excluded from gnome.

rhill · Posted: Sat May 28, 2005 5:58 am Post subject:

you can use /etc/portage/profiles/package.provided to prevent gnome from installing mozilla or epiphany, or anything else for that matter. directions are in man portage
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