I noticed with portage, if you emerge a package like xmms, it will start downloading QT, this seems to be an issue with portage. I was told on IRC that I could set the USE variable to something like "-qt" and have portage ignore that option. Well thats great but lets say I want a barebones gnome2 desktop, how on earth do I have a chance of remembering all the optional libraries and system packages to put in the USE variable? I talked to people on #gentoo that suggested a bug-report. I am a user with limited disk space so 3 GB isnt enough for a gentoo install, I realize that I need temp space for compiling but it would appear as though portage compiles for all configure flags and treats them as dependancies and downloads so you can compile with _all_ options. Is there a flag you guys could compile that would allow portage to take a minimalistic approach to emerging packages? A flag that users could set so the minimal amount of dependancies would be installed? Thanks for your time. R.
read /usr/portage/profiles/use.desc and create a USE variable that suits you as for rethinking the default USE variable, there is some discussion on it right now
well, there really is no "minimal" set. each person has their own idea of "minimal" The USE flags were designed to allow you to customise things. Take a look at the USE variable HOWTO on the documentation section of the website.
