On Monday, March 30, 2015 9:09:14 PM Alan McKinnon wrote: > On 30/03/2015 15:04, Holger Hoffstätte wrote: > > On Mon, 30 Mar 2015 13:44:59 +0100, Neil Bothwick wrote: > > > >> On Mon, 30 Mar 2015 12:15:01 +0000 (UTC), Holger Hoffstätte wrote: > >> > >>>> Portage does not override your choices, and it certainly does not > >>>> allow one single ebuild to automagically change the behaviour of > >>>> multiple other ebuilds. The correct way to bring about changes in > >>>> behaviour is to add your global choices to make.conf (which is > >>>> outside the control of the tree), or to add your explicit changes to > >>>> package.* > >>> > >>> ..that just shows the root of the problem: the ABI is not handled > >>> consistently, but rather as a per-package configuration choice. > >> > >> The news item also showed how to make it a global choice, avoiding the > >> need to multiple per-package directories. > > > > I'm not sure that's a solution to the problem at all (which is why I > > didn't do it on my machines either). Apart from always wasting much more > > work & resources than necessary for no good reason it doesn't answer the > > question what happens as soon as I want to build a package that is > > 64-bit-only - in which case you'd end up in the same situation we have > > now, just mirrored. > > > Maybe it's time we asked the multilib devs how they intended to deal > with these questions you raise.
I don't have a problem with the way it is, but I think something like the following would be nice: instead of just supporting use_flag and -use_flag you could add something like @use_flag (auto-use flag) that automatically builds the feature only if needed to satisfy a dependency. That way you're not changing anything with existing configuration and still got full control over it. -- Fernando Rodriguez