What if a ebuild needs a particular use flag ?

[garo]

Suppose ebuild "a" realy needs a library provided by use flag "b", but you don't have "b" in your USE-flags . Does "a" still gets compiled (with "b" support) ?

[pjp]

You would type

[SmegTheLight]

You can also just put the USE="xxx" in front of the ebuild command so it only affects that run of emerge instead of all emerges from that terminal session.

As for the "a" needs "b" question, my understanding is that if ebuild "A" really needs a library, then it is a dependancy in the ebuild that will get built regardless of the USE flags.

For instance, XMMS depends on gtk. If you emerge it, it will also merge the gtk package even if you have USE="-gtk"

On the flip side, libxml is an optional dependancy for XMMS. If "xml" is one of your use flags, then when you emerge XMMS, it will also emerge libxml, and build xml features into XMMS.

This is why you use the "-p" option with emerge - to see what other packages it wants to/needs to install. (ie. emerge -p xmms)

[garo]