On Sat, Oct 03, 2015 at 10:15:08AM +0100, Mick wrote: > Hi All, > > I happened to notice that Firefox is having more and more USE flags for using > system-side rather than bundled in libraries: > > ... > > However, such libraries are not enabled by default and FF will be downloading > 177,578 KiB of sources. A couple of questions: > > - Will FF be downloading less if the system side USE flags are enabled?
As far as I can tell, the same tarball is downloaded no matter which system-* USE flags you set. The ebuild tells the build system to use the system stuff. > - What are the benefits or disbenefits of enabling them? Enabling the use of system libraries could make Firefox unstable, since the FF developers may have patched the bundled libs. It will also save compile time, although compared to FF itself, most of the libs that can be prevented from bundling have short compile times. For me, personally, disabling those USE flags and using bundled libs represents some sort of idealogical loss since I view bundling libraries as a cop out solution. This may or may not matter to you. Alec
