Atm gnome-extra/gnome-games and www-client/epiphany (and other packages) are listed as a required dependency in gnome-extra-apps: RDEPEND=" >=gnome-base/gnome-core-libs-${PV} >=app-arch/file-roller-${PV} >=games-board/aisleriot-${PV} >=gnome-extra/gcalctool-6.2.0 >=gnome-extra/gconf-editor-3.0.0 >=gnome-extra/gnome-games-${PV} >=gnome-extra/gnome-system-monitor-${PV} >=gnome-extra/gnome-tweak-tool-${PV} >=gnome-extra/gnome-utils-${PV} >=gnome-extra/gucharmap-${PV}:2.90 >=gnome-extra/sushi-0.2.1 >=mail-client/evolution-${PV} >=media-sound/sound-juicer-2.99 >=media-video/cheese-${PV} >=net-analyzer/gnome-nettool-3.0.0 >=net-misc/vinagre-${PV} >=net-misc/vino-${PV} >=www-client/epiphany-${PV} shotwell? ( >=media-gfx/shotwell-0.11 ) tracker? ( >=app-misc/tracker-0.12 >=gnome-extra/gnome-documents-0.2.1 ) " Can we change them to USE-Flag dependencies like shotwell and tracker? I think, at least games are completly optional to the average user. Reproducible: Always
Gnome-extra-apps is the meta package to pull in all the non-core bits of gnome3 that the gnome upstream considers to be part of their desktop experience. It has few options by design. The most important feature of gnome-extra-apps is that if you do not like it, there is absolutely no requirement for you to use it! Simply unmerge gnome-extra-apps, re-emerge gnome-base/gnome with USE=-extras, and manually pick which additional gnome applications that you want to install. Shotwell and tracker are exceptions because there are good technical reasons to give gnome-extra-apps users an easy way to avoid these two specific packages. Shotwell is the only package pulled in by the gnome meta that would pull in webkit-gtk:2, a library that takes half an hour to compile even on a quad-core machine. And tracker if started can have a performance impact on your system (see http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/desktop/2011-September/007395.html). My vote is for keeping gnome-extra-apps as it is. Gnome team, thoughts?
The words of the initial ebuild writer iirc and I second that completely. USE flag profusion does not help at all, just pick what you need.
