[CFT+BRAINSTORM] One USE_ to rule them all

John W. O'Brien john at saltant.com
Mon Feb 11 04:46:19 UTC 2013


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On 02/07/2013 04:52 AM, Baptiste Daroussin wrote:
>
> Let's go for USES then!
>
> regards,
> Bapt

Clearly I'm a bit late to the party here, and I don't wish to reopen
litigation of this particular design choice. However, I would like to
respectfully suggest that, in addition to the grep-ability of a keyword,
it is useful to inform selection on the basis of whether it is to be
used in a declarative or imperative sense.

The on-its-way-out USE_BLAH is imperative, whereas USES has a
declarative flavor. In cases where the purpose is to tell the ports
machinery to *do* something, I favor the imperative where it can be
applied naturally. The declarative---statements of fact---are dandy for
things like CONFLICTS, HAS_CONFIGURE, and PORTNAME.

Consider this notional capability, BLAH, that is available from ports or
even base, but which some ports bring with them (think libz or the
client library for some protocol). If port X has its own BLAH, then
USES=BLAH is a true statement but an erroneous usage in the context of
port X. This is why USE would be better.

In any case, thank you for embarking on this valuable consolidation.

Cheers,
John
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