Re: USE flags ??
On Thu, 21 Oct 2004 12:48:53 +0100, David Dorward <dorward@gmail.com> wrote:
> USE flags specify (mostly) what optional packages
> to compile against. For Debian to do this, all packages would have to
> be compiled against all combinations of all optional dependancies. As
> it is, without that level of choice, Debian is already too big to fit
> on a DVD! (And that doens't begin to cover the additional level of
> testing that would be required).
I've been meaning to get some stats for some time - but I'd be
interested to see how feasible it would be to package up the binary .o
files for a package and the linking stage would be done locally -
advantages: faster than compiling all from scratch for user. Assuming
that a program built with configuration X and configuration Y share a
significant subset of .o files; the package could include the superset
(so, you download the .o files, and link according to your preferences
e.g. X support). Dynamic dependencies so if you don't want emacs with
x support, you don't pull in the x libraries, but the mirror still
only has one X package (albeit with spare .o's for the two
configurations). Disadvantages: the linking stage means slower than a
straight binary download. Slightly larger packages (well, that all
depends on how many .o files the configuration change would impact)
An alternative would be a subset of common .o's and a small compile
job for the user. I guess gentoo could reach this stage just by having
a distribution-wide distributed ccache, or something.
--
Jon Dowland
dowland@gmail.com
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