hi, another useflag bogus ;-) that requires under normal conditions unnessesary special entry in a package.use file to workaround this my philosophy is generaly to keep the package.use file (and also my systemwide use-flags in make.conf) as small as possible with per-package based "workaround" entrys here, because i consider every entry needed there as superfluous (at least for a standard minimalistic and modular gentoo kde 5 based system!) and usually work only with systemwide enabled (or if nessesary disabled) useflags via my make.conf! none of my other apps mandatorily depend on gstreamer... the "multimedia" useflag is used by at least 2 other (PyQt5 and qt-docs) packages here that dont have anything to do with gstreamer at all! output of "equery h multimedia" on my box: * Searching for USE flag multimedia ... [IP-] [ ] dev-python/PyQt5-5.10.1-r1:0 [IP-] [ ] dev-qt/qt-docs-5.12.2_p201903121945:5 [IP-] [ ] kde-plasma/kwin-5.15.4:5 if you use a globaly enabled "multimedia" useflag kde-plasma/kwin pulls in the unnecessary (if you use the media-libs/phonon-vlc based vlc multimedia backend for kde) gstreamer framework via dev-qt/qtmultimedia emerge -avDNu world output: These are the packages that would be merged, in order: Calculating dependencies... done! [ebuild N ] media-libs/graphene-1.8.2::gentoo USE="-doc -introspection -test" ABI_X86="(64) -32 (-x32)" CPU_FLAGS_X86="sse2" 125 KiB [ebuild N ] media-libs/gstreamer-1.14.4:1.0::gentoo USE="caps nls -introspection -orc -test -unwind" ABI_X86="(64) -32 (-x32)" 3.188 KiB [ebuild N ] media-libs/gst-plugins-base-1.14.4-r1:1.0::gentoo USE="X alsa egl gbm nls ogg opengl pango theora vorbis -gles2 -introspection -ivorbis -orc -wayland" ABI_X86="(64) -32 (-x32)" 3.617 KiB [ebuild N ] media-libs/gst-plugins-bad-1.14.3:1.0::gentoo USE="X bzip2 egl nls opengl vcd vnc -gles2 -gtk -introspection -orc -test -wayland" ABI_X86="(64) -32 (-x32)" 4.569 KiB [ebuild R ~] dev-qt/qtmultimedia-5.12.2:5/5.12::gentoo USE="alsa gstreamer* openal pulseaudio qml widgets -debug -gles2 -test" 0 KiB [ebuild R ~] kde-plasma/kwin-5.15.4:5::gentoo USE="caps handbook multimedia* -debug -gles2 -test" 0 KiB Total: 6 packages (4 new, 2 reinstalls), Size of downloads: 11.498 KiB The following USE changes are necessary to proceed: (see "package.use" in the portage(5) man page for more details) # required by kde-plasma/kwin-5.15.4::gentoo[multimedia] # required by @selected # required by @world (argument) >=dev-qt/qtmultimedia-5.12.2 gstreamer if i would enable the "gstreamer" use-flag systemwide a lot more than 4 new packages would be unnessesarily pulled in! i recommend here to "undock" gstreamer dependency from the "multimedia" use-flag by renaming the "multimedia" use-flag in kde-plasma/kwin to "gstreamer" and therefore simply solving this "depedency use-flag" problem which pulls in the unnecessary gstreamer framework so that vlc framework users dont have by force pulling in extra stuff... if people still want to do it they have to simply enable the "gstreamer" use-flag systemwide in their make.conf or per-package base via their package.use file. this enhancement would result in one less entry in a package.use file on systems which use only the vlc backend for kde 5 like i do... the package.use entry i did speak about that would then be "outdated" is: kde-plasma/kwin -multimedia kde 5 users dont need gstreamer at all (especially if they already use vlc for general multimedia requirements! also like i do) thank you for considering this...
USE=multimedia is making dev-qt/qtmultimedia optional, so technically is correct. Michael, do you remember why it was renamed to that in cc771837?
(In reply to Andreas Sturmlechner from comment #1) > USE=multimedia is making dev-qt/qtmultimedia optional, so technically is > correct. Not, if you want only work with systemwide enabled or disabled use-flags in make.conf and dont want to use any entrys in a package.use file, which are always a sign that something is not correct with use-flag handling in gentoo at all for "default cases". in this case a standard kde 5 desktop based on vlc framework not the gstreamer framework...
(In reply to Andreas Sturmlechner from comment #1) > USE=multimedia is making dev-qt/qtmultimedia optional, so technically is > correct. > > Michael, do you remember why it was renamed to that in cc771837? I believe the point was raised that the USE flag isn't about any kind of gstreamer support, but rather for showing preview videos of compositing effects. (In reply to mael from comment #0) > if you use a globaly enabled "multimedia" useflag kde-plasma/kwin pulls in > the unnecessary (if you use the media-libs/phonon-vlc based vlc multimedia > backend for kde) gstreamer framework via dev-qt/qtmultimedia It's not unnecessary, at the time of writing that patch qtmultimedia explicitly needed to be built with gstreamer in order to play videos (which kwin wants to do). This was a mandatory dependency from upstream, for which we decided to offer a downstream USE flag.
