For all to be able to totally understand keywords 100%, this is in regards to USE= feature in make.conf a.k.a - info that is not currently available. The current information currently available that describes them currently is way too vague for most regular users of Gentoo. Most people can't totally say with 100% certainty that they REALLY *know* what the keywords do / affect truly. Such as what they do how, why, what, where, dev, non-dev, what gets installed, etc. and what keywords are not necessary depending on what type of system the user is building. I realize that it takes a more informed and learned user to use Gentoo, but cryptic keyword descriptions that will mostly be understood by developers isn't a good thing. We would all like to be able to look at a description of a keyword and say "need it" or "don't need" and really *know*. I admit I start checking keywords, and I can't say I really know if I need them or not, some I can....but even those could use better descriptions with greater verbosity and explanation, which I suppose is currently missing. I am having trouble _understanding_ them to even grasp what the keywords mean, do, what effect they have, etc., etc. I am sure having this is something all would welcome. It would be very beneficial! And would make Gentoo that much better and easier to understand. The docs at http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en are very understandable, so why not make keyword descriptions get that kind of detail and be *that* understandable? Everything else is. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: N/A Actual Results: I really don't know what's getting installed as well as the effect this has on my system and it make the regular user clueless to what is *really* going on (keyword wise) Expected Results: N/A Topic on forums: http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-547375-highlight-.html What's the point of using a major component of the distribution with out a fundamental knowledge of who the thing works totally, and what it is you are really doing by using "features" that aren't clear.
a) I assume you're talking about use flags, not keywords (that's an important difference b) You said something about a "Proposal" in the summary, but I don't actually see any proposal or suggestion for a solution in this report or the referenced forum thread(s), just a description of the perceived problem. So if you want to make a proposal then please write it down, otherwise please don't put misleading information in the summary c) This is nothing that portage can fix (as it is not a technical problem), and bugzilla is the wrong forum for global enhancement requests, use the gentoo-dev mailing list instead (or write a GLEP, but in the end it has to go to the list anyway) d) It's not exactly the first time this topic comes up, but the main problem is simply that nobody actually writes better/more verbose descriptions. In the end it all comes down to someone going though the list and checking each description if it is useful enough, and if not write a better description, in many cases also writing more specialized descriptions for global flags for each package using them. There are already technical means to do that, they just need to be used. e) Even if someone does d) it may not make you happy enough, as different people have different definitions of "useful". For example I think the description of the "doc" flag is perfectly fine, you disagree with that which is ok, but don't expect me to spend time on writing a hundred (or more) specialized descriptions for every package using that flag. Closing as INVALID for the above reasons, if you want that anything is done about this you'll have to find/get some people to do the actual work of writing better descriptions (and people who didn't understand the current descriptions would be more qualified for that job than the original authors). Once you have better descriptions file bugs about the specific flags to let the maintainers know.
