On Thursday 27 March 2008, Michael Schmarck wrote:
> > The question now is why were the alsa, oss and other drivers
> > removed from the -base ebuild?
>
> Because they belong to the meta package, I suppose. The real
> question rather is, why was rb not updated to depend on -meta.
> I filed https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=214852 for that.

Good luck with getting a dev to agree to that. I wouldn't, and don't
know a single case in portage where an ebuild DEPENDS on a -meta ebuild
(possible -metas DEPENDING on subordinate -metas excepted)

-meta packages are designed to be manually added to world by users who
wish an easy way to emerge everything. It's not described in policy
anywhere I have ever seen, the actual usage in practise tells you the
intended usage.

Go back and read bug 159470 again, especially comments 3 and 4. The
dependencies you propose cause circular dependency loops and
recompilation of packages that depend on the USE flags when they
change, even when the resulting files installed are EXACTLY the same as
the ones replaced. This is the reason why the USE flags were removed
from the ebuild, to save you from the horror that is circular deps.

> > I recall something similar with another sound
> > app a while ago, the reason is that it could be used as a networked
> > sound delivery server and there's no good reason to require the
> > user to have sound driver support on the local machine. I suspect
> > your bug will be closed WONTFIX, with luck the dev will justify
> > their reasoning.
>
> If not, I'll reopen it.

And Jakob will probably just close it. He's brutal about that, and it's
his job. The problem you are trying to solve would be much better
served with a request for an ELOG to be emitted by rhythmbox alerting
to user to the need to install gst-plugins-whatever.

There's a damn good reason why rhythmbox does does depend on -meta. That
will never happen, so you should get over it. Bug 159470 explains why
it's not a good idea to depend on -base either, so now you get to issue
one more emerge by yourself. These decisions are made taking the entire
Gentoo ecosystem into account and what is best for all users. If you
will be inconvenienced by a step taken for the greater good and there
is no sane way to give you what you'd like, then the loser will be you.
Sorry.

--
Alan McKinnon
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

--
gentoo-user@(protected)