Hello all, In the Gentoo Prefix project we have a special USE flag: 'prefix', kind of like $ARCH USE flags. I am writing here to ask of the best way to introduce a global implicit USE flag to gentoo-x86. There has been some interest from other devs to kill diffs in ebuilds between gentoo-x86 and prefix overlay. The addition of this USE flag will allow this to happen in a more staged approach.
We utilize the prefix USE flag for various things, such as (but not limited to): -Exclude dependencies that the host OS provides (glibc, xorg-server, etc) -No-op a particular action not appropriate for prefix -Ensure a particular action that is only needed for prefix ie. # unavoidable conditional patch, can't submit upstream either, rare case use prefix && epatch prefix-search-path.patch # glibc is provided from the host OS, at least can't install in prefix !prefix? ( elibc_glibc? ( >=sys-libs/glibc-2.36 ) ) # rarely seen in real life, but something like this is possible. $(use_enable !prefix some-host-os-feature) So, my recommendation is to: 1) mask the prefix USE flag in base/use.mask because no one except the prefix profiles should use this flag. 2) unmask and force the USE flag in prefix profile. 3) add entry to use.desc. addendum) use.{mask,force} imply that the USE flag is explicit so there will be no QA warnings. However, we have toyed with other ideas. One of which is to introduce IUSE=prefix in prefix.eclass similar to the USE=multilib approach. I don't really like this idea because it exposes the use flag and we don't want it exposed to the users. BTW, the prefix profiles are not in gentoo-x86 yet, discussion will follow the USE flag introduction. Thanks, -Jeremy