On 2009-01-18, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckin...@gmail.com> wrote: >>>> All the packages built against mozilla-firefox won't >>>> compile, if after installing firefox 3.0 you get some >>>> blockers, please add 'xulrunner' to your USE-flags. >>>> >>>> Does anybody have idea what the above sentence is trying to say? >>> >>> It's saying that if you use firefox -3*, then you should >>> remove "firefox" from your USE and add "xulrunner" instead. >>> This way, nothing in the tree will try to pull in firefox-2* >>> (which obviously conflicts with firefox-3*). >> >> Wow. I'm not doubting that what you say is true, but how >> anybody was supposed to get that from the emerge message is >> beyond me. >> >>> There have been 4 earlier threads on this very topic in the >>> last fortnight. For more details, please check the recent >>> archives (rehashing the same thing over and over is getting >>> really tedious) >> >> Sort of makes you wonder if the message is a bit too cryptic, >> eh? > > If I read that message out loud, it sounds suspiciously like a > babelfish translation from Japanese to English. Whatever it > is, the author of the message is certainly not a native > English speaker. > > But the intent is easy to see if you already know how it > works.
Yes, once somebody has told you the answer, it's possible to make some sense of the message. But, I stand by my assertion that give just the message very many people are going to figure out that it means you need to replace the "firefox" use flag with the "xulrunner" use flag so that apps will build against firefox-3 instead of trying to build against firefox-2. > Briefly: > > The gecko rendering engine was always part of firefox through > versions 1 and 2. This is plain silly as such a thing should > really be an independent block of code that stands alone and > everything else can use without requiring that all of firefox > be present. > > This has now been fixed, the engine is now in a package called > xulrunner which firefox builds against. Other apps also need > xulrunner, but if you keep "USE=firefox" intact those apps > will pull in all of firefox-2 just to get gecko. If you have > firefox-3 installed, you have an instant blocker. With > "USE=xulrunner" they will build against xulrunner and firefox > can be whatever you feel like installing. Now I'm confused. I thought xulrunner was the user-interface engine rather than the rendering engine. -- Grant
