From the ChangeLog: *iproute2-2.6.7.20040608-r1 (13 Sep 2004) 13 Sep 2004; <solar@gentoo.org> +iproute2-2.6.7.20040608-r1.ebuild: added minimal USE flag so we can yeild a build of tc. fixes compile failures in uclibc envionments where we might not have/want a dep of db for the arpd which can be provided elsewhere Are these uclibc compile failures still an issue? Also, arpd is controlled by the berkdb use flag, so that comment doesn't seem relevant. 11 Feb 2005; Mike Frysinger <vapier@gentoo.org> iproute2-2.6.10.20050112-r1.ebuild, iproute2-2.6.10.20050124.ebuild: Do not build the arpd binary if USE=-berkdb #81660 by Roy Marples. Personally, I think the minimal USE flag should just be dropped. At the very least, it should be renamed to something more descriptive, or a description should be added in metadata.xml.
Does berkdb actually compile and work on uclibc now? It used to horribly fail in that environment. If it still fails, we can change it to trigger wrap USE=berkdb with that. The rest of the fact that it only installs /sbin/tc with USE=minimal should go away.
the only user of berkdb is arpd, so USE=berkdb controls that entirely. minimal is only related to that anymore in so much that it also disables arpd and thus elides the dep entirely. when the flag was added originally, we didn't have USE=berkdb at all. selinux could also be lumped into this category, but this is more effort than it's worth imo. so i'll drop the nesting of berkdb in minimal ... if people want that, they can also USE=-berkdb. i always thought it weird that iproute2[minimal] didn't install iproute2 (`ip`), so i've added that to USE=minimal. wrt "something more descriptive", the whole point of USE=minimal is to be this sort of stripped down install. not using USE=minimal would defeat the point of the flag.
should be all set now in the tree; thanks for the report! Commit message: Install `ip` with USE=minimal and document the flag http://sources.gentoo.org/sys-apps/iproute2/iproute2-4.0.0-r2.ebuild?r1=1.1&r2=1.2 http://sources.gentoo.org/sys-apps/iproute2/iproute2-9999.ebuild?r1=1.24&r2=1.25 http://sources.gentoo.org/sys-apps/iproute2/metadata.xml?r1=1.4&r2=1.5
