2011/3/31 Eray Aslan <e...@gentoo.org>: > On Wed, Mar 30, 2011 at 04:41:25PM -0500, Dale wrote: >> +1 Some descriptions may as well not have one at all. May as well >> Google the flag and the package and see what, if anything, it returns. > > I would say working as intended. If you do not know what a package > does, chances are you don't need to enable it. And if you do want > to tinker, USE flags gives you enough of a hint to start googling.
This has nothing to do with what you want to imply here. It's not about the tech skill of the user reading the definition. It's about the definitions being generic and vague enough so they can fit eight thousand packages that doesn't relate in any way, right? To say that the kde use flag gives "support for kde" says next to nothing to me on some packages. When I look into the ebuild and/or into the sources I can see all it does is to copy a .desktop file somewhere, or to enable the kde file dialog, or to create a window deco or a plasma snippet, or a phonon backend, or a color scheme. That's what I wanted to know and there's no way I can know it by looking at the USE description. > Having said that, we should at least have gramatically correct > English in descriptions. One might also lean towards more verbosity > in end-user oriented packages (versus server/backend/toolchain > packages). In any case, 10-15 words should be more than enough to > explain what a USE flag does. Mostly. But try cleaning the ffmpeg/libav-mplayer mess to decide which codec to use and you will find that a clear explanation (so you can decide) can't fit into that space. I don't have a problem reading ebuilds, though having to dive into the sources of a big package is another story, but I can understand users that find this an unpractical "solution". After all, if the USE descriptions doesn't tell a thing we should just remove them because they are taking space in our portage tree to provide zero info. So, "kde" flag purpose is to "enable support for KDE", oh, really?[/sarcasm] -- Jesús Guerrero Botella
