Richard Fish schreef: > Holly Bostick wrote: > > >>Walter Dnes schreef: >> >>> The point which I'm trying to make, and everybody else seems to be >>>missing, is that *THE DEFAULTS ARE CONSTANTLY CHANGING UNDER OUR FEET*. >>>Several weeks ago, I didn't have to put -gnome in USE in /etc/make.conf. >>>Now I do. Several months ago, I didn't have to put -ipv6 in USE. Now I >>>do. >>> >>> >> >>I'm sorry, I don't agree that the defaults are "constantly" changing. >>I'm 99% positive that gnome was a default in last year's profiles (as >>was kde), and I'm moderately less certain about ipv6, but I do think it >>was there. Perhaps your, like my, usage habits have changed, so you have >>only now *noticed* these defaults (that's why I'm less certain about >>ipv6; I never paid attention to it until I decided to stop using it), >>rather than that the defaults themselves have changed. >> >> >> > > > I think this is accurate, at least for gnome,kde,arts,...although ipv6 > seems to be a fairly new addition. What I find happens most often is > that a package that I already have installed gets an updated ebuild, > which now includes some USE flag that was already set by default. > Because I don't have any other packages installed that use that flag, I > don't specify it anywhere. But when when the update occurs, now it > looks like I have to pull in 5-10 other packages, or change my use flags > to exclude it. > > Adding --newuse to the emerge command gives a good clue when USE flags > get updated though. > > -Richard >
That's another point as well, Richard-- control of USE flags is much more fine-grained now than it was let us say a year ago, when I last installed Gentoo. So it's often not so much that the USE flags are changing as that more USE flags are being made visible than were previously. Program updates are moving previously "always compiled" functions into USE flags that we can control (witness GDM and PAM, and in the future apparently OO.o will also have a working PAM USE flag, which it didn't before, until people started complaining that they had removed PAM, but had to emerge it in for OO.o). Also, some USE flags-- notably kde-- don't quite have the same meaning anymore, because of the split ebuilds... I check any ebuild that comes up with a kde flag, because I have some KDE parts, but not all, so I always want to know if the part of KDE that the flag for the specific program I'm trying to install refers to is one I have or one I don't, and if compiling the program -kde will break something. The thing is, this is how it's supposed to be, as far as I understand it. The control of USE flags is at the heart of Gentoo's customizeability, and we're intended to use --newuse, and watch for the green flags, and the starred flags, so we know what's going on, and to actively contol what's going on. I'll grant that it's maybe kind of a rocky transition, as we all get used to the increased information flow, and absorb the meaning of it all, but the tools to manage it all are still there, just like they've always been (and getting better all the time). So I must say I don't see cause to complain; I use Gentoo and not whatever else because I *want* this control, after all. Holly -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
