Both options are only intended for developers who are porting MythTV to another operating system. The "--backendonly" configuration option disables preview generation on the backend, and the "--frontendonly" configuration option is only tested to work on MacOSX (and disables portions of mythtv-setup, though this is not a major concern). Either option may cause strange problems when using any of the plug-ins. Both options break dependency checking and so may cause compilation problems if make is run with a -j option other than 1. Neither of these options are tested frequently to see if the compilation fails or if they break some other feature. This is especially true of "--backendonly", while "--frontendonly" is tested every few weeks since it is still used implicitly by the MaxOSX port.
Did you really read the einfo that this ebuild spits out? if use frontendonly; then ##Backend Removal ewarn ewarn "You are using the experimental feature for only installing the frontend." ewarn "You will not get Gentoo support nor support from MythTV upstream for this." ewarn "If this breaks, you own both pieces." ewarn myconf="${myconf} --disable-backend" fi if use backendonly; then ##Frontend Removal ewarn ewarn "You are using the experimental feature for only installing the backend." ewarn "You will not get Gentoo support nor support from MythTV upstream for this." ewarn "If this breaks, you own both pieces." ewarn myconf="${myconf} --disable-frontend" fi
It prints this, along with shads of other information. Why allow the user to break the package when there is NO ONE working on an Microsoft Windows port using portage?
Someone's forcing the users to use the flags? Or, what's your problem?
*sigh* I'll remove the options upstream.
FYI - I'm using the "frontendonly" use flag on a frontend machine, and I've had no problems in the past month or so that I've been using it.
"I'll remove the options upstream." -Daniel Kristjansson What about Gentoo users who are running on platforms where the backend or frontend don't work, won't compile or aren't needed? Gentoo doesn't just run on x86/amd64. It runs on ppc, sparc and plenty of other platforms. I wouldn't be surprised if *some* of those people are developing or at least depend on it for mythtv. Not *many* but some, I'm sure.