Jason Stubbs wrote:
I'm not sure anybody ('cept maybe Luke-Jr) got my point, so I'll try to be
clearer. :-)
On Tuesday 09 December 2003 02:50, Jason Stubbs wrote:
Hmmm, just looking through use.desc I couldn't really see any many other
flags that immediately sprang to mind as being as bad as the "java" one.
"mysql" is definately another candidate.
"mysql" has a definition of "Adds mySQL support". My contention is that it is
too general. Most users that would add this flag would be developers of sql
stuff. Reading the definition and having knowledge of mysql, I would think it
enabled support for mysql in things like tora. However, it also enables mysql
support in packages totally unrelated to development such as postfix.
My suggestion is that the USE flags be overhauled to put some order into it.
Ideally, this would be done along the lines of Luke-Jr's post. Hence, the
above should be split into mysql-dev and mysql-user or some such. The same
could be done with the java USE flag.
I whole-heartedly agree with the premise of "putting some order into
it". I still think part of that needs to be some sort of clear
documentation. 'mozilla +java' is pretty clear, but 'xfree +xml2' just
says to me "why does xfree need xml2, what does it do for it, and what
would happen if I didn't include it?". There needs to be some sort of
clear descriptions (optimally per-package) that allow people to make
informed decisions about which flags to include and which they can
safely discard.
--
Joel Konkle-Parker
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