Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon <at> gmail.com> writes:

>
> 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)

In that case, rb should depend on gst-plugins-base, but that's
also not what them devs want. It rather seems, that they prefer
that users have a non-functional system - which I find a quite
strange attitude. But that's just me, I guess.

> -meta packages are designed to be manually added to world by users who
> wish an easy way to emerge everything.

Fine, but did you actually have a look at the gst-plugins-meta
package? It does *NOT* add everything. It is *NOT* at all like
the kde-meta package. The gst-plugins-meta package only adds
everything, if all the USE flags are set. Again, that's very
much different from the kde-meta package - for it to be the
same, the kde-meta would need to have, let's say, a "ppp"
flag with which a user could control if ppp stuff (kppp for
example) get's installed. But there's no such flag.

> It's not described in policy
> anywhere I have ever seen, the actual usage in practise tells you the
> intended usage.

The actual usage of other meta packages (again, I'm thinking
abut kde-meta and also gnome-base/gnome here) differs *completely*
from the usage of the gst-plugins-meta package. So I don't
see, how you can compare different things here.

> Go back and read bug 159470 again, especially comments 3 and 4.

I don't quite understand that. Nobody is proposing, that rb should
now grow an "alsa" USE flag. I'm also not saying that gst-plugins-base
should re-grow the alsa USE flag.

> The
> dependencies you propose cause circular dependency loops

Why's that?

rb should depend on gst-plugins-meta which should depend on
gst-plugins-alsa (if the USE flag is set so).

> 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.

Care to expand on that?

> This is the reason why the USE flags were removed
> from the ebuild,

That's fine.

> to save you from the horror that is circular deps.

Could you cook up a testcase to show that?

> > > 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.

Then I'll reopen it.

> He's brutal about that, and it's
> his job.

Dunno. But let's not discuss Jakub.

> 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.

I don't think so.

> There's a damn good reason why rhythmbox does does depend on -meta.

I suppose you mean "does not depend on -meta", right?

> 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.

Actually, it doesn't. Comment #3 from Jakub doesn't apply. I totally
agree with Jakub, that it might have been a bad idea to have something
like

mad? ( =media-plugins/gst-plugins-mad-0.10* )

in the totem ebuild. That sucks. Nobody wants that back.

I seem to be missing something - what happens, if rb would
depend on gst-plugins-meta? Suppose USE=alsa is set. Then if
"emerge rhythmbox" would be done, gst-plugins-meta and
gst-plugins-alsa would be emerged. Then the user thinks that
dvb is a good idea and adds "dvb" to his make.conf file.
If he'd recompile gst-plugins-meta, he'd also get gst-plugins-dvb
installed. Would rb then need to be recompiled, in the point
of view of emerge?

Michael

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