Hi, Right now, a number of game packages are using USE=dedicated to control 'installing a dedicated game server only'. Aside to that, some game packages also have USE=server that controls building the server itself. Non-game package use USE=client and USE=server.
In order to improve uniformity of USE flags across different packages, the QA team would like to deprecate USE=dedicated and use USE=client and USE=server as appropriate. The problems I see with USE=dedicated are: - it is game-specific. The term 'dedicated server' is not used amongst other server/client model packages. - It uses negative logic. Instead of enabling something, it disables client. Pretty much 'dedicated' == 'noclient'. Negative logic is confusing. - In packages having USE=server as well, it can lead to really absurd combinations, like what does 'USE=dedicated -server' mean? Will it build no executables at all? If we add REQUIRED_USE='dedicated? ( server )', this gets quite unfriendly. As an alternative, we would use USE=client and USE=server along with proper IUSE defaults to control client & server builds appropriately. Both flags use positive logic, and REQUIRED_USE='|| ( client server )' is rather clear. Does anyone see any real problems with that? -- Best regards, Michał Górny <http://dev.gentoo.org/~mgorny/>
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