What you're saying is "maybe they should stop being Gentoo". The whole point of Gentoo is customization of your built-from-source packages. (As I recall, but it's been over a decade since I tried it so I might be remembering things wrong). Every optional feature in a piece of software, that would be controlled by some `--with-foo` option to `configure`, gets turned into a USE flag in Gentoo. Packages that have `--with-foo`, `--with-bar`, `--with-baz`, and `--with-quux` then have four USE flags, with 16 possible combinations of enabled or disabled. And the Gentoo maintainers team tries to make sure that all those combinations work, except for ones that obviously contradict each other.
So it's not Gentoo's decision to have so many flags, it's upstream's decision. I bet the Gentoo maintainers would love it if upstream acknowledged "okay, this 'optional' feature isn't really optional any longer". But they don't, and they continue to have dozens of flags, which Gentoo (due to their build philosophy) dutifully copied and tried to test — an overwhelming task.
> So it's not Gentoo's decision to have so many flags, it's upstream's decision.
That's a weird statement to make though. I would say that it was Gentoo's decision to test for all functionality.
But, even ignoring this for the moment: how does this apply to the linux kernel? Because the config file has TONS of options. Does Gentoo support all of these via use flags? If not, why not? Because that distinction to me would be totally arbitrary.
Would you say they should NOT test the options they're offering the user?
Because Gentoo has basically three options; let me know if you can think of a fourth option I'm missing.
1. Turn every optional feature from upstream into a USE flag, and test them. Which means testing all the 2^N combinations.
2. Turn every optional feature from upstream into a USE flag, but do not test them. Which means users can end up with untested combinations, some of which have proven in the past to be buggy.
3. Stop turning every optional feature from upstream into a USE flag. Which means giving up on Gentoo's distinguishing characteristics for this package.
Okay, I guess there's a fourth option:
4. Stop packaging the Chromium package at all. Which is what they've ended up doing.
What you're saying is "maybe they should stop being Gentoo". The whole point of Gentoo is customization of your built-from-source packages. (As I recall, but it's been over a decade since I tried it so I might be remembering things wrong). Every optional feature in a piece of software, that would be controlled by some `--with-foo` option to `configure`, gets turned into a USE flag in Gentoo. Packages that have `--with-foo`, `--with-bar`, `--with-baz`, and `--with-quux` then have four USE flags, with 16 possible combinations of enabled or disabled. And the Gentoo maintainers team tries to make sure that all those combinations work, except for ones that obviously contradict each other.
So it's not Gentoo's decision to have so many flags, it's upstream's decision. I bet the Gentoo maintainers would love it if upstream acknowledged "okay, this 'optional' feature isn't really optional any longer". But they don't, and they continue to have dozens of flags, which Gentoo (due to their build philosophy) dutifully copied and tried to test — an overwhelming task.
> So it's not Gentoo's decision to have so many flags, it's upstream's decision.
That's a weird statement to make though. I would say that it was Gentoo's decision to test for all functionality.
But, even ignoring this for the moment: how does this apply to the linux kernel? Because the config file has TONS of options. Does Gentoo support all of these via use flags? If not, why not? Because that distinction to me would be totally arbitrary.
Would you say they should NOT test the options they're offering the user?
Because Gentoo has basically three options; let me know if you can think of a fourth option I'm missing.
1. Turn every optional feature from upstream into a USE flag, and test them. Which means testing all the 2^N combinations.
2. Turn every optional feature from upstream into a USE flag, but do not test them. Which means users can end up with untested combinations, some of which have proven in the past to be buggy.
3. Stop turning every optional feature from upstream into a USE flag. Which means giving up on Gentoo's distinguishing characteristics for this package.
Okay, I guess there's a fourth option:
4. Stop packaging the Chromium package at all. Which is what they've ended up doing.
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