Re: USE flags mumbling

[Tom Rini <tom_rini@mentor.com>]

Michael 'Mickey' Lauer wrote:
> Am Donnerstag, den 01.07.2010, 23:29 +0100 schrieb Phil Blundell:
>> On Thu, 2010-07-01 at 15:16 -0700, Tom Rini wrote:
>>> One of the issues with some form of USE flags, and I believe this is one 
>>> of the big ones for Angstrom as well as any other public feed publishing 
>>> distribution is that having a single recipe that does different things 
>>> based on variables makes maintaining their feed (and allowing users to 
>>> publish their own compatible feeds) a nightmare.
>> It's only a nightmare if the flags in question are user-frobbable.  If
>> they are all nailed down in the DISTRO configuration (which
>> DISTRO_FEATURES certainly ought to be), and those folks who want to
>> build compatible binaries just leave them alone, then there oughtn't to
>> be any real problem.  To that extent it doesn't really seem any
>> different to the choice of compiler or tuning flags or glibc version or
>> any of the other ways in which you can already produce incompatible
>> binaries by flipping the wrong switches.
> 
> Agreed. I think we should be more open to this concept. At least for
> packages with optional (but "infecting") X11 support -- such as EFL -- I
> plan to use such a mechanism soon.

Putting on my devil's advocate hat again, unless something is really and 
truly locked down, it's going to get modified.  While most end users 
won't want to frob gcc versions, frobbing bluetooth or alsa or x11 or 
... is more common.  For example, Gentoo.  And this is a problem if it's 
not easily detectable that you're going to have a clash.  All the DANGER 
DANGER DANGER comments in the world won't stop users from putting up the 
incompatible feed (with their own warning that someone else will ignore).

-- 
Tom Rini
Mentor Graphics Corporation