proper use of USE flags

hosler · 10-31-2009, 01:28 AM

Gentoo is awesome, but I really have no idea if I am taking full advantage of the use flags. Normally I look at all the available use flags from the Gentoo website and stick every use flag I think I need into the /etc/make.conf file. The only problem with this is that a lot of packages have use flags enabled when they dont need to be. For instance, I don't want Amarok using mysql, but it does anyway because the mysql use flag is in make.conf. Basiscaly, I want few packages to use mysql and others not to. Of course a simple solution to this would be to remove mysql from the USE flags in /etc/make.conf and start using the package.use file to select which packages will use mysql. However this seems very tedious. I might have to add an entry into the package.use file for maybe over 100 packages.
I would like to know what is an appropriate list of USE flags I should put in my make.conf file. My system is a laptop that will be used for school, music, few games, and internet.
So what are some good use flags to put in my make.conf that all packages should use. Everything else ill just put into my package.use file.

markush · 10-31-2009, 03:27 AM

Hello hosler,

as described in the Gentoo-handbook you can set the use-flags individually for every package. Therefor you'll have to create a file "/etc/portage/package.use". In your example of amarok and mysql you may insert a line

Code:

media-sound/amarok -mysql

May be that I wrong with the following suggestion since I'm new to Gentoo as well. I set only a few "systemwide" use-flags in /etc/make.conf. When emerging a package, I do a

Code:

emerge -pv package

and look at the use-flags which are enabled and which are disabled. And if I want to change this, I insert an entry in the package.use-file.
An easy method to change the useflags for a single emerge is to

Code:

USE="-mysql +anything" emerge anypackage

Note that you can both, add and remove use-flags with an entry in package.use.

Markus

hosler · 10-31-2009, 02:27 PM

I know how use flags works. I was just wondering if putting them all in the make.conf is even a good idea. If it's not, then what are some use flags that are good for the make.conf file?

markush · 10-31-2009, 02:31 PM

Hello hosler,

this will depend on your needs. As an example my useflags for my current desktop-system: the line in my /etc/make.conf

Code:

USE="-ipv6 -kde X alsa cdr dvd hal acpi"

I'm not using kde or gnome but fvwm2 as a windowmanager.

To answer your question: I do not think, that it is a good idea to put them all into the make.conf.

Markus

dxqcanada · 10-31-2009, 02:36 PM

You can continue to use global USE flags in /etc/make.conf. This is handy in general.

Use package.use to disable or enable flags for particular ebuilds.
If you disable flags you should have a huge package.use file.

Example ... I use KDE so I have added the kde USE flag globally.
I do not want celestia to use kde as KDE4 is currently not supported ... so I add this entry to package.use:

sci-astronomy/celestia -kde

Acron_0248 · 11-01-2009, 12:02 AM

As have been already said, a "good flag" is different for every user and that's basically the point of using gentoo, every user can customize it based on personal needs.

Myself, I have this on my make.conf file

Code:

USE="X -accessibility alsa -apm -arts bash-completion -berkdb -bonobo bzip2 -cups curl dbus -eds -esd -fam -gd -gdbm -gnome -gpm gtk2 hal imagemagick -ipv6 -kde -kerberos -ldap -minimal -mozilla -motif mmx nls opengl -oss pch -pam -qt -qt3 -qt4 -samba sse sse2 -ssl tiff truetype vim-syntax -xinerama zlib"

and a lot of people would see that like a lot of USEs, others would say otherwise. I don't really care about gnome or kde so I don't want packages downloading dependencies of those environments just because such USE is in place, however I do care about vim so I really like every package capable of having a syntax file to be downloaded thus vim-syntax set in there is a very good choice for me.

Of course, my package.use had grow a lot over the time, however, I still prefer to have such a file in charge of any customization instead of dealing with many global USEs.

Try to keep focus on the packages more important to you, check the USEs of those packages individually and if you see a particular USE that affects many or all of those packages then you might have a candidate global USE.

Regards

i92guboj · 11-01-2009, 07:01 AM

No one can tell you what USE flags you will need. You will polish your config as you continue using Gentoo and learn how USEs affect each particular package.

Generally, people set the general case in make.conf, for example, if you want mysql support turned on for most packages, then you add "mysql" to your make.conf, on the contrary, if you want it disabled for most packages, then you use "-mysql" in your make.conf. Then you use package.use to add exceptions.

But this is entirely a matter of taste, after years of polishing and fine tuning I don't even have an USE definition in my make.conf, I use package.use exclusively to set all my use flags. It's quite big.

ursusca · 11-16-2009, 05:23 PM

Hi,

Also it might be a good idea to try desktop profile for you. You will have the USE flags preset that you need for a desktop.

d2_racing · 11-20-2009, 05:33 PM

In fact, I use the desktop profile for at least 2 years and because of that, I have only this :

Code:

CFLAGS="-O2 -march=native -pipe"
CHOST="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu"
CXXFLAGS="${CFLAGS}"
MAKEOPTS="-j5"
GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://distfiles.gentoo.org"
USE="kde -gnome kdeenablefinal xcomposite nls truetype userlocales unicode -firefox xulrunner apache2 mysql mysqli simplexml"
LINGUAS="fr"
INPUT_DEVICES="keyboard mouse evdev"
VIDEO_CARDS="vesa nvidia"

#SYNC="rsync://rsync.ca.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage"
#SYNC="rsync://rsync2.ca.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage"

PORTAGE_ELOG_CLASSES="log warn error info"
PORTAGE_ELOG_SYSTEM="echo:log,warn save:log,warn,error,info syslog:error"

#PORTDIR="/home/sylvain/git/portage"

Pretty small make.conf.