On Mon, 30 Mar 2015 12:14:29 +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote: >> OK, then so why do I have to edit files to tell the system to USE this >> and that after the system tells me it needs that ... ? >> >> Why isn't this taken care of within portage itself? >> >> I don't *want* to decide 32bit or not ... (I like that I *can* ...) >> >> I want a (mostly) stable and current linux system with the necessary >> choices done by the maintainers ... if Skype needs it ... ok, then make >> that a dependency/requirement somewhere ... but why force me to set that >> (for so many packages) ? > > OK, think it through first.
Sure thing. > You want skype. Skype is 32bit. So far, we're good. You put an entry in > package.use to enable abi_x86_32 for skype. Except..at that point you would have already failed. There is no good reason whatsoever why portage shouldn't be able to treat this like a transitive required USE flag requirement, percolating through all libs from the toplevel requirement's dependency tree. In fact it should do so automatically when the ebuild declares the abi_x86_32 constraint from the start, without requiring the user to do anything. There are other reasons why coupling the native and 32-bit worlds together is a bad idea in the long-term, regardless of understandable technical reasons and good intentions. So yeah: think it through first. -h
