Vaeth wrote: > The main point in introducing the "live" USE flag should be IMHO to > let the user decide whether the sources should be fetched. The fact > that IUSE then marks live ebuilds in the way which you wanted is an > additional side effect.
A tend to agree with Zac that USE flags should not dictate package manager behavior (e.g. whether a package gets included in a specific package set or defining a package as "live"), and the idea of the IUSE side-effect seems a bit unclean (i.e., behaviors that the dev did not intend might end up being a surprize; I think we need to be careful about side-effects). However, I do see the point about the RESTRICT variable. Throwing random flags into it does not seem ideal, and I think convenience should take a back seat to correctness when designing, e.g., ebuild syntax/rules. But why would using a new variable require an EAPI change any more than adding new flags to RESTRICT? I.e., if people start using "OPTIONS=" or "FLAGS=", it would simply be ignored by older package manager versions, just like new RESTRICT values would be ignored. Or am I missing something fundamental? -Joe