On 12/03/12 20:05, Bruce Hill, Jr. wrote:
These virtual apps are irritating me, and the fanboi answers in #gentoo
are worse.
What is the purpose of virtual/shadow and why would I want it?
Paul's answers covers it, but I'll give an explanation that is the
reverse of a fanboi answer.
The reason we need virtuals is because of a shortcoming in portage: lack
of "provides" functionality. RPM packages can tell the package manager
what they provide. For example, RPMs for libav and ffmpeg can both use
"ffmpeg" as their "provides" field. Portage can't do that, so it needs
a new "virtual/ffmpeg" package instead.
