Bug 399543 – sys-fs/udev should have USE="vim-syntax" to depend on app-vim/udev-syntax

• Product: Gentoo Linux
• Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

[Description Gordon Pettey 2012-01-20 19:51:31 UTC]

Vim syntax package udev-syntax exists; udev should have a USE flag like other packages to pull in its relevant syntax package.

Reproducible: Always

Actual Results:  
USE="vim-syntax" emerge sys-fs/udev doesn't merge app-vim/udev-syntax

Expected Results:  
USE="vim-syntax" emerge sys-fs/udev merges app-vim/udev-syntax

[Comment 1 Jeroen Roovers (RETIRED) 2012-01-22 15:29:31 UTC]

Historically, requests for USE flags that merely set RDEPENDs have not fared well.

Rebuilding packages large or small just to pull in a "useful" run time dependency (or not) is widely regarded as a waste of everyone's time.

[Comment 2 Gordon Pettey 2012-01-22 16:19:01 UTC]

So only add it to 171 or 175 or later, so nobody on stable has to rebuild.

[Comment 3 Samuli Suominen (RETIRED) 2012-03-22 05:42:00 UTC]

This is purely runtime-only 'drop in' package and adding it as a USE flag would only trigger useless rebuilds when enabled or disabled. I'm inclined to refuse these type of requests (just like bug 407797)

[Comment 4 Gordon Pettey 2012-03-22 16:06:08 UTC]

In that case, I have to ask why any package at all has vim-syntax USE flags. It is up to a user to avoid pointless rebuilding by not arbitrarily changing USE flags in already installed packages. Adding the flag to a future version would even avoid --newuse rebuilds (though that could also be worked around with --changed-use), since a rebuild would be required to upgrade, anyway.

[Comment 5 Samuli Suominen (RETIRED) 2012-03-27 16:33:02 UTC]

(In reply to comment #4)
> In that case, I have to ask why any package at all has vim-syntax USE flags.
> It is up to a user to avoid pointless rebuilding by not arbitrarily changing
> USE flags in already installed packages. Adding the flag to a future version
> would even avoid --newuse rebuilds (though that could also be worked around
> with --changed-use), since a rebuild would be required to upgrade, anyway.

Gentoo has more or less recently made a decision on the developer mailinglist (gentoo-dev) about not having USE flags for small files such as, 
systemd units and bash-completion scripts

This would extend to vim syntax files which are of same nature

And when package is building something (ie. as opposed to just installing them such as many dev-python/dev-perl/etc. packages do) we should avoid must as possible adding useless USE flags to avoid/minimize the triggers of rebuilding it

So really, I can see your point, I just don't agree with it, sorry