Bug 149647 – Portage Profiles force Xorg VIDEO_CARDS flags on Non-X systems

• Product: Gentoo Linux
• Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

[Description Bob 2006-09-30 13:21:59 UTC]

I have servers that are configured without Xorg.  After resyncing the portage tree, the systems are suddenly showing that USE flags for Xorg have been inappropriately forced "ON" on these systems.  Specifically, the VIDEO_CARDS=, INPUT_DEVICES=, and any other Xorg-related flags have inappropriately been forced ON for all x86 boxes that run Gentoo -- even those that have been designed purposefully not to have any form of Xorg support on them. 

The change to the profile is effectively forcing every x86 default-linux box, regardless of its profile, to act as if its an Xorg desktop box.  That is just wrong.

Looking at the /etc/portage/profile/default-linux/x86/ChangeLog, it looks like these changes were implemented on 2006/08/08 by [e-mail].  

I particularly enjoyed the irony of reading his comment that suggested that it was inappropriate to pollute the USE variable, and that such pollution should be avoided.

Please fix the 2006.0 and 2006.1 profiles for x86 so that Xorg compatability is not crammed down everyone's throat.  Thanks.

http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-3615204.html

[Comment 1 Jakub Moc (RETIRED) 2006-09-30 14:04:31 UTC]

Reopen with some Xorg...

[Comment 2 Bob 2006-09-30 14:33:07 UTC]

Reopening, but I don't understand what you're asking for.  Xorg does not exist on any of the systems, so there isn't any Xorg configuration information for me to provide.

Even so, the portage profile is forcing the Xorg flags to be set.  The information that sets them is in the ChangeLog and in the profile that is available in the portage tree:  /usr/portage/profiles/default-linux/x86.  

Do you want me to post the profiles here as attachments?  FWIW, everything is already documented in the forum post that is readable via the hyperlink that was already provided, but if you can't surf to the thread, just let me know and I will repost duplicative information here.

[Comment 3 Jakub Moc (RETIRED) 2006-09-30 22:57:46 UTC]

Ooops, I meant emerge --info, not Xorg, so that we can see what profile you are using. Sorry :) Not that I would what you are requesting, if you don't want those, then set VIDEO_CARDS="" in make.conf; it's in parent profile on purpose, so that we don't have to duplicate the information in every single subprofile.

[Comment 4 Donnie Berkholz (RETIRED) 2006-09-30 23:05:41 UTC]

Gentoo defaults for USE and VIDEO_CARDS and INPUT_DEVICES are made as sensible defaults for a reasonable desktop system, not as minimal defaults for a server. Note that things like gtk, X, qt, gnome and kde are in the default USE. If you don't want these, you need to set VIDEO_CARDS="" and INPUT_DEVICES="" (or whatever you want) in make.conf.

Please don't say things are crammed down anyone's throats when they are absolutely trivial to change.