This is a well-documented change in portage. The use.defaults file is no longer used. Previously, this file would turn on use flags that were neither enabled nor disabled based on packages you had installed. This was a bad idea to begin with, IMHO; RIP use.defaults.
Why a bad idea? I find it made things easier. If you install SANE for example it is almost obvious you have installed a scanner and you probably need the "scanner" use flag. So use.defaults did. Of course you can disable it if you don't appear to like it.
use.defaults appeared to me like healthy, rational behaviour and an help for the end user. Why has it been dropped?
m. -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
