The source distribution of kvm includes tools for testing/tracing kvm. The flag "test" is used to compile these tools but than they are not installed. From the users point of view the flag only slows down the merge procoess, the flag makes no other difference. I think these tools are not of interest for users but only for developers so the flag could be dropped. If the ebuild should support the tools than the flag should also toggle kvm-tracing or another flag for tracing should be introduced. After all tracing might be interesting for users in order to file bug reports with trace data. Reproducible: Always
$ euses -cs test test - Workaround to pull in packages needed to run with FEATURES=test. Portage-2.1.2 handles this internally, so don't set it in make.conf/package.use anymore app-emulation/kvm:test - Build tests I am basically CCing myself wondering why app-emulation/kvm uses its own USE flag description here. (The examples USE flag would normally be used to install such test programs, if at all.)
The use flag description is there because I added use flag descriptions to the metadata when the push was on to do that. Should I have left some of the use flag descriptions out? If they're supposed to be there but standard, where do I find this list of standard descriptions? I'll look into dealing with the actual point of this bug when I bump to 79.
metadata.xml allows a developer to override the global description. There is no list that should be left off because developers are encouraged to provided their own description. The additional USE flag description doesn't hurt anything and is encouraged by the GLEP that the council passed.
(In reply to comment #3) > metadata.xml allows a developer to override the global description. Nobody's denying that except perhaps the reporter. :) Maybe the alternative USE flag description could be enhanced to somewhat stress that the tests are used only in the test phase?
(In reply to comment #0) > no other difference. I think these tools are not of interest for users but only > for developers so the flag could be dropped. I disagree. I am not a KVM developer, merely an enthusiast, but I am regularly asked by smarter people than I on freenode#kvm to gather debug and trace data when testing the latest KVM builds against my virtual hosts. Please build and install the support tools.
I've just nuked test for now. Tests are restricted, so it's not a useful setup. I'm willing to be convinced that (some of) the things in the user directory should be conditionally or unconditionally installed, but that should be in a different bug, I think.
