Hi, I have a question about masked USE flags and packages in the testing branch. I have a problem with "sci-biology/emboss", a sequence analysis package I maintain that was keyworded ~amd64 a few days ago. Six packages (containing various genetic and biological data) in the tree have optional EMBOSS support that may be enabled using the corresponding USE flag. EMBOSS PDEPENDs on these six packages, because they are necessary for a complete EMBOSS installation but cannot be installed before EMBOSS as they have to be indexed using EMBOSS programs.
These six packages in turn depend on EMBOSS, but only if optional EMBOSS support is turned on. The reason is these packages may be used without EMBOSS (although that is rarely the case, some users appreciate that and I do not want to force over 200 programs on someone just for installing a small amino acid properties database). The end result is that in order to have EMBOSS work on a given arch, the six depending packages must also be keyworded, *and* the emboss USE flag must be enabled by default. Otherwise, the users would be left with the PDEPENDencies built without EMBOSS support, and many EMBOSS programs (some of which are very important and popular) would be broken. The problem is that on amd64, the "emboss" USE flag is still masked and is not in the default USE flags like it is for other arches that support EMBOSS (see bug #105086 [1]). I was told that demasking USE flags is only done when packages hit the stable branch. (I do not know why and would appreciate an explanation.) It also seems that architecture conditional dependencies are deprecated. I still believe that unmasking the keyword would not break anything since no amd64 stable package has optional EMBOSS support and, of course, no such package should be stabilised until EMBOSS itself is stable. The bottom line is EMBOSS is currently keyworded ~amd64 but broken on amd64. This is a known bug and should be easy to fix, but if we cannot demask the USE flag or use architecture conditional dependencies, I really have no idea how to fix this. Thoughts or suggestions anyone? [1] http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=105086 -- Olivier Fisette (ribosome) Gentoo Linux Developer Scientific applications, Developer relations
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