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List:       gentoo-dev
Subject:    Re: [gentoo-dev] Amount of useflags enabled by default
From:       William Hubbs <williamh () gentoo ! org>
Date:       2009-10-24 19:38:54
Message-ID: 20091024193854.GA7616 () linux1
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On Sat, Oct 24, 2009 at 06:24:51PM +0200, Thomas Sachau wrote:
> Petteri R??ty schrieb:
> > Thomas Sachau wrote:
> >> In addition, i see a trend to enabled more more more USE flags (either over profiles or via IUSE
> >> +flag). Whats the reason for forcing a big load of default enabled USE flags on every user including
> >> more dependencies, more compile time, more wasted disk space and more possible vulnerabilities
> >> except some users, who complain about a missing feature and are not able to think and enable a USE
> >> flag for that feature?
> >>
> > 
> > One possible reason is that our packages should follow upstream policy
> > and maybe upstreams usually like to keep things enabled rather than
> > disabled.
> > 
> > Regards,
> > Petteri
> > 
> > 
> 
> With that argument you could request to enable all useflags by default. Its ok in my eyes, if you
> follow upstream the way tarballs are created (e.g. qt move to splitted qt packages or the other way
> round). Something else would make maintainence part much harder. But i disagree on the part for
> "follow upstream policy for default enabled USE flags".
> Gentoo is about choice and i would like to have the choice to disable most USE flags by default and
> with an easy way, e.g. by choising a profile with less default enabled USE flags. Forcing every user
> to disable many or almost all flags independent of his profile would make Gentoo less userfriendly
> in general without a good reason. If upstream does not want to support a disabled USE flag, they
> should not offer the choice to disable it in the first place.
 
 I think there are two issues being put together here.  One is the issue
 of profiles enabling use flags by default, and the other is packages
 enabling use flags by default in IUSE.

At the package level, I do think that we should follow the upstream
policy.  Upstream giving you the option to disable something doesn't
mean that they don't support disabling it, it just means that they are
giving you the choice to disable it.  If it is enabled by default, it
could mean that upstream has found that most of their users prefer to
enable it, so they set it up that way.

To me, the question really is at the profile level since enabling use
flags there has the potential to affect entire systems.  I don't think
flags should be enabled at the profile level unless we are sure that
most users who use that profile will want the flags enabled.

-- 
William Hubbs
gentoo accessibility team lead
williamh@gentoo.org

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