Why does libplasma require USE=wayland?

[szatox]

I'm trying to do a long overdue easyeffects update, and it's pulling like half of KDE, and on top of that it demands that I enable USE wayland.
After some digging I tracked it down to this bit in kde-plasma/libplasma ebuild

Code: Select all

BDEPEND="
    >=dev-qt/qtbase-${QTMIN}:6[wayland]
    >=dev-util/wayland-scanner-1.19.0
"

I know that KDE wants to completely move to wayland, but I think it hasn't abandoned X11 _yet_, so why does it want me to enable wayland and what does this use flag actually mean to a system happily running X11?

[sam_]

Packages often need Wayland libraries at build time and then at runtime they conditionally enable based on whatever the session is. In the same way, you often can't be X-library-less on systems that are using only Wayland sessions at runtime.

[Anon-E-moose]

Including wayland, should not increase the size of your executables/libraries, to any significant degree.
It would (possibly) pull in some of the header files and link to wayland libraries.
None of which really matters if you're not using it.
And it's there if you ever decide you want it (for whatever reason).

[logrusx]

what does this use flag actually mean to a system happily running X11?

Nothing really. Wayland is not a server, you're not putting anything that can be started as a service on your system. If it won't be used it can't be attacked et.c.

Best Regards,
Georgi

[szatox]

Alright, I get it.
Thanks, all