William Hubbs posted on Sun, 23 Feb 2014 16:13:18 -0600 as excerpted: > One is to use a use flag to build them. If I do that, I would consider > forcing the use flag on with an iuse default, so anyone who doesn't want > the runlevels rebuilt every time would need to turn it off in make.conf > or package.use. > > The other way is to put this setup in pkg_config, which would mean a > user would need to run "emerge runit --config" to have the runlevels > built. > > The first way means that if you decide you want the runlevels built the > way we build them you would need to emerge the package. The second way > means that you could just use the --config option for emerge to rebuild > them any time.
What about putting the rebuild in a non-pkg_config function, then hooking up that function to BOTH the above, so users can choose automatic rebuild if they like, and regardless of whether they've done so, they can run emerge --config runit any time to rebuild it independent of remerging the entire package? Meanwhile, based on a decade plus of gentoo user experience, in practice, emerge --config is obscure enough that using it in an ebuild tends to hide it. If that's deliberate and the intent is a mostly one-shot first-configuration run[1], emerge --config is a good choice. But if the idea is to make configuration more routinely accessible not to hide it, an alternative such as an eselect module or the various individual package config tools (gcc-config for gcc, the rc-* tools for openrc, etc) should be considered instead. OT: I've often wondered if emerge --config is actually intended to hide mostly one-shot configs, or if that's purely unintended accident. It seems to me that if it's the latter, portage needs some standard method to make such --config options more visible. Perhaps an emerge --config-list option or some such, to list every installed package that has an emerge --config option would be a good start. Perhaps there already is such a thing, but it's so obscure I've never heard of it, even after a decade as a "relatively advanced" gentoo user. --- [1] Consider bind. An admin runs emerge --config bind once to set it up, and then don't run it again unless he or the ebuild decides to massively change the chroot layout or something. Routine administration is accomplished by more routine methods, editing the config file(s), etc. -- Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs. "Every nonfree program has a lord, a master -- and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman
