Mailing List Archive

dedicated USE-flag is inconsequent and confusing
Hi!

Jan Kundrát said this topic belongs to the mailinglist.

You can find the related bug-report here:
http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=221967

Content:

>From the name of the USE-flag, you could expect different things:

1. It stands for 'dedicated server', which would mean, that this USE-flag does
enable support for a dedicated server.
(That means also that you would expect, that you have in both cases the whole
GUI; and with enabled USE-flag you get additionally the dedicated server.)

2. It stands for 'dedicated only', which means, all the GUI part is skipped.
(That means you would expect, that you have in both cases the whole GUI and the
dedicated server; and with enabled USE-flag you get only the dedicated server
but not the GUI.)

>From the description, it seems, that there is even a third case where you have
either only the GUI or only the dedicated server (something you would not
except at all).

After all my experiences with USE-flag, I would expect, that a USE-flag which
does not contain the name "no" or "only" does only add a specific feauture but
does not remove anything. Therefore I expected the first case when I saw this
USE-flag for the first time and a lot of ebuilds also use it like this. Though
the second case seems still also valid for me. The third case doesn't make
sense at all for me. (Is there really any ebuild with this behaviour? If so,
this should be fixed.)

Anyway, the behaviour of the USE-flag should be consequent. The whole sense of
USE-flags is to define the behaviour of ebuilds. And normally you define the
USE-flags globally for your system. If there are USE-flags which behave
different on each ebuild, they don't make sense.

For example, on my desktop system, I want to have the first behaviour for all
ebuilds (I want to have both the game itself and the dedicated server). I have
enabled the dedicated USE-flag globaly and it works good for most games I use.
Though, I always need to make some exceptions for some games which is annoying
and should not be.

On my server, I want to have the possibility to get only the dedicated server
but not the GUI. For some own ebuilds, I introduced the USE-flag
'dedicated-only' for this.

To fix the problem, there should be two different USE-flags. One should do the
first behaviour (something like 'dedicated' or 'dedicated-server' or 'server')
and another for the second (something like 'dedicated' or 'nogui' or
'dedicated-only' or 'server-only'). The important thing is to not have a
USE-flag with different behaviours.

So, what do you think?

Greetings,
Albert


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Re: dedicated USE-flag is inconsequent and confusing [ In reply to ]
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Albert Zeyer wrote:
| Hi!
[snip]
| So, what do you think?

I think it makes no sense to have a no-server no-gui option, so this just doesn't map
cleanly to our binary use flag system.

Marijn

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Marijn Schouten (hkBst), Gentoo Lisp project, Gentoo ML
<http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/lisp/>, #gentoo-{lisp,ml} on FreeNode
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Re: dedicated USE-flag is inconsequent and confusing [ In reply to ]
I think it should be made consistent or it should be turned into a
local use flag.
no-* or *-only flag don't make sense in my opinion, because you can
get the same with:
-gui instead of nogui (maybe -gtk/-qt4/-kde or something would be even better)
-* server instead of server-only (sure, this can only be done for each
single package, but it looks cleaner to me than -only)

Benedikt
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Re: dedicated USE-flag is inconsequent and confusing [ In reply to ]
On Thu, 2008-05-15 at 15:42 +0200, Benedikt Morbach wrote:
> I think it should be made consistent or it should be turned into a
> local use flag.
> no-* or *-only flag don't make sense in my opinion, because you can
> get the same with:
> -gui instead of nogui (maybe -gtk/-qt4/-kde or something would be even better)
> -* server instead of server-only (sure, this can only be done for each
> single package, but it looks cleaner to me than -only)
>
> Benedikt

Some packages also have the X USE-flag.

Though this USE-flag is often used to enable linking against X;
disabling doesn't mean to remove the GUI (it's often for games or libs
like libsdl which have alternative gfx output like aalib, framebuffer,
etc.).

There is also already a guionly and a client-only USE-flag. But I don't
think this is a good USE-flag for games because it's somehow confusing
then if you want to have only the dedicated server and not the GUI.

I also don't like no* USE-flags that much. But there are already a lot
available. I thought they were introduced because it's most probable
that you want to have the specific support and if not, you have to
specify this explicitly.

I think the server USE-flag is a good USE-flag to enable/disable the
support of a dedicated server of a specific game. This USE-flag is
intuitivly clear.

The GUI would not depend on the server USE-flag. For the GUI, perhaps
the USE-flag client would be good.


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Re: dedicated USE-flag is inconsequent and confusing [ In reply to ]
Albert Zeyer <albert.zeyer@rwth-aachen.de> posted
1210861450.3957.24.camel@localhost, excerpted below, on Thu, 15 May 2008
16:24:10 +0200:

> I also don't like no* USE-flags that much. But there are already a lot
> available. I thought they were introduced because it's most probable
> that you want to have the specific support and if not, you have to
> specify this explicitly.

The no* USE flags are deprecated and headed toward legacy-only, due to
portage support of USE defaults being so new and there being no way to
default to "on", for those packages where it made the most sense,
previously. However, AFAIK USE defaults are an EAPI=1 feature, and thus
not quite yet encouraged for the general tree. That said, new versions
of many packages with no* USE flags have them removed in favor of USE
defaults. When EAPI=1 portage and the newer USE defaults versions of
these packages have been stable for a period and as the by then legacy
versions fade out, positive based USE defaults will ultimately replace
most or all of the current no* flags.

All as I understand it as not-a-dev-but-a-regular-dev-list-reader.

--
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

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Re: Re: dedicated USE-flag is inconsequent and confusing [ In reply to ]
On Fri, May 16, 2008 at 3:07 AM, Duncan <1i5t5.duncan@cox.net> wrote:
> However, AFAIK USE defaults are an EAPI=1 feature, and thus
> not quite yet encouraged for the general tree.

EAPI-1 is approved for use in the tree. People are encouraged to use
it whenever they need any feature provided by it. IIRC, system
packages are an exception, but it's perfectly ok for the rest.

Regards,
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Santiago M. Mola
Jabber ID: cooldwind@gmail.com
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