packaging system (was: Re: GCC 3.3.2 kernel)

[ibotty]

> Example: say you have a graphical text editor built upon Motif (e.g.
> nedit.)  You can build and run it with either OpenMotif or LessTif.  If
> you already have LessTif installed, and the package declares OpenMotif
> as a dependency - nothing good can come of it!  Yes, you can put
> USE_LESSTIF (or whatever it is) in make.conf to try to address the
> problem, but a proliferation of package-specific switches just
> complicates the whole process IMHO.  It would be slightly better to have
> a single port called, say, 'Motifalike', that builds either OpenMotif or
> LessTif depending on your preference, and have every Motif-dependant
> port specify Motifalike in its dependencies.  Even slightly better than
> that might be to specify Motif not as a package, but as an 'interface'
> to which any number of packages might conform.

just to point out,
gentoo uses 'virtual/motif' for this part.
this is nice. equally nice to dpkgs 'provide: ' entry, but still nice.

~ibotty