I was thinking about a thing when I drove to work this morning, which might be a pretty good idea to mention in the installation handbook. In chapter 5, there is a short description/introduction to the CFLAGS and CXXFLAGS options in make.conf. When unpacking stage1,2,3 there are CFLAGS and CXXFLAGS options specified in make.conf. Now when we go to chapter 6, we talk about profiles, but nothing is mentioned about CFLAGS/CXXFLAGS specified in make.conf overrides the make.default settings in the profile. Maybe it's better with an example: My environments are ppc64/POWER5 based, and when doing an install from stage1,2,3 I allready have CFLAGS and CXXFLAGS specified in the make.conf coming from one of the stages (-O2 -pipe). So when I choose the power5 profile: lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 74 Nov 3 22:14 /etc/make.profile -> /usr/portage/profiles/default-linux/ppc/2005.1/ppc64/64bit-userland/power5 I actually then don't get the -mtune=power5 -mcpu=power5 specified in the make.default. Wouldn't it be a good idea to say a little about this in the handbook? I will be happy to make the changes.
1 month and no response.
looks to me like the info is already there Choosing the Right Profile First, a small definition is in place. A profile is a building block for any Gentoo system. Not only does it specify default values for CHOST, CFLAGS and other important variables, it also locks the system to a certain range of package versions. This is all maintained by the Gentoo developers.
Yes I know that, but my point was that nowhere is it stated that your own make.conf is overruling the default profile, like the CFLAGS and CXXFLAGS variables. I didn't mean a rewrite of the handbook, just perhaps a footnote concerning this. Something like: 'Keep in mind that all settings from your default profile, is overruled/overwritten by the settings placed in your make.conf'. Like if you don't know what you are doing, don't play with make.conf. See what I mean or is it just bologni?
i dont see much value in explicitly stating that ... the profile and such files are described as setting up default values ... so when you configure make.conf in chapter 5, the implicit meaning is that you're overriding any and all default values
Okay, I rest my case :-) Closing.