On Tue, Aug 02, 2005 at 12:45:05AM -0600, Keziah W wrote: > I got this idea and I'm not sure if it would be feasible, but if it is, > it could lead to many Cool Things: > Is there any reason not to have dynamic libraries for most of the > changes made by USE flags, that are used only if present, and then the > USE flags would just specify whether to compile that library?
These type of dependencies are already in use by quite a lot of packages.
For instance,
DEPEND="blabla
opengl? ( >= x11-base/opengl-update-2.2.0 )
..."
If you haven't set USE="opengl" prior to the installation and you have
altered your USE variable to contain opengl afterwards, a simple
emerge --update --deep --newuse world
will trigger the USE-flag change and rebuild the package with the "new"
dependency.
This isn't always possible though, sometimes packages have the required
support code in their own code; trying to separate that from the "core" is a
difficult and time-consuming job. If upstream doesn't do this, it would be
a pain for Gentoo to perform and maintain.
Wkr,
Sven Vermeulen
--
Documentation project leader - Gentoo Foundation Trustee
The Gentoo Project <<< http://www.gentoo.org >>>
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