CCZE is a log colorizer, which I always use to colorize the syslog-ng output on tty12. After installing it I update the default /etc/syslog-ng/syslog-ng.conf with 1 line to colorize tty12: Change this line: destination console_all { file("/dev/tty12"); }; To this line: destination console_all { program("ccze -r >> /dev/tty12"); }; I would like to request a new use flag added to syslog-ng (called "ccze") which will add ccze as a dependency and will modify the default syslog-ng.conf with the change above. Perhaps one day this use flag could become part of some profiles and make Gentoo 10x better :) Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. USE=ccze emerge app-admin/syslog-ng 2. /etc/init.d/syslog-ng start 3. Look at tty12 The ccze use flag should only modify the default config file for syslog-ng and not update or merge changes into an existing one. This way we won't clobber any important changes that somebody made and Gentoo nobies can experience a wonderful log output on tty12 when they are struggling with common problems.
After some further thought, perhaps it would be better to call the use flag "color" instead. This way the coupling to ccze is less strict. Later improvements to ccze might require a name change or a different solution altogether, but that could be abstracted away with a "color" use flag instead of a "ccze" use flag.
Why would you add a USE flag _just_ to change the default configuration? You can just change it whatever way you want and CONFIG_PROTECT should keep it that way.
I was thinking that new installations could choose to start with a configuration that has color support. It's something that is trivial to setup, but probably never actually gets setup because of how trivial it is. Similar to a colorized shell. A lot of distros do not have ls colors enabled and when users are first exposed to it they wonder why it isn't setup and how they can also set it up. I know that when I am building systems and solutions in general that I don't have unlimited time and the little pirks often get assigned a low enough priority that they never get implemented. This is one way to improve the Gentoo experience on new installations without any manual config changes. Perhaps one day the color use flag could be a default for syslog-ng, but I think a good starting point would be to have the use flag, but disabled by default -- then update the handbook when new users are first installing syslog-ng.
The default config is meant to be a minimal working setup. As Jeroen mentioned, once you have a local custom config it should be easy to maintain it moving forward between versions. Adding complexity to the default config is undesirable.
