On 18/11/2010, at 12:43am, Walter Dnes wrote: > On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 02:00:48AM +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote > >> If you then mentioned that their defaults broke Dale's setup, they'd >> likely answer "Who's Dale?" followed shortly by "None of us have >> hardware like Dale to test. Sorry 'bout that. Set USE=-hal" > > Of course the USE flag advice is given *AFTER* the new flag breaks > your system. That's why I use "-*" at the beginning of my USE in > /etc/make.conf. I never found out whether hal would break my system<G>. > If Dale had used "-*" his X would not have broken, even if some other > ebuild pulled it onto the machine as a hard-coded dependancy.
Uh, except sometimes a USE flag is added to a package and set to USE=foo by default, with USE=foo maintaining the original behaviour. Therefore by selecting "USE=-*" you may be changing your system's behaviour. You claim to be "a control freak" but you seem to be doing this to avoid the "chore" of properly inspecting USE flags each time you emerge. If you `emerge --pretend` before every update you make, you would see what's changed! What's the point in running `emerge --pretend` if you don't look at it!?!? Further to the aside in the email I sent a minute or two ago, all the changed USE flags in Portage's output show up in bright yellow or green, BTW, so they're easy to spot. I have a feeling that we're not going to convince you that you're doing things "wrong", so I apologise if my tone sounds strident. I beg you to try it. Stroller.
