On 03/18/2010 02:39 PM, Dmitry Bashkatov wrote: > Hello, gentoo devs! I have a little story about USE flags. > Almost every package in gentoo has USE flags. Many of them have clear > meaning. For example: <doc> builds package documentation, <qt> or > <gtk> build GUI frontend. Meaning of this flags is one for all > packages in portage. And this is described in use.desc file. But there > are many USE flags with fuzzy meaning. For example <java> USE flag of > package net-print/cups. What does it mean? Description file says "java > - Adds support for Java". But what kind of support is it? Build Java > bindings or build some optional tools written on Java? <python> flag — > "Adds support/bindings for the Python language" also doesn't asks on > my question about kind of support. Only ways to find out answer are > read ebuild and "./configure --help" or use other sources of > information like google. But this takes time. Very very many time when > installing system first time. Also this work already done by package > maintainer and there is no reason to repeat this for every user. > > My suggestion is to take out all this per package USE flag vagueness > to use.local.desc file, so you can use > $ equery uses net-print/cups > + + java : build java printing web-application > + + python : build python bindings to libcups > This is only example, I really don't know what this flags mean here. =) > Another my suggestion is to extend ebuild format so package maintainer > can easily add use flag description. > > What can you say about this? May be this is my delirium? And may be > only my gentooic brain need this sort of information about USE flags. >
This is already supported by metadata.xml local use flags, you can add extended information as local use flag in addition to global use flag. So I take this as a friendly reminder that maintainers should start using the feature. -Samuli
