Re: [9fans] nupas update

[erik quanstrom <quanstro@quanstro.net>]

> > there is no 64 bit kernel.
>
> Will there ever be?  Or is that even an appropriate question?

i think it's a good question but lacking time travel or a working
64-bit kernel, this question is unknowable. :-)

> > please, no use flags.  we can't test what we've got.  use
> > flags make the problem go factorial.  (gentoo for example
> > doesn't work if you set the profile use flag.)
>
> Now we are getting to the heart of a very important matter.  I agree that
> use flags causes the dependency graph to go factorial -- but pruned to the
> number of use flags implemented in each ebuild (so it is not factorial to
> the number of accepted use flags).

if each package has only n use flags, then you still have
2^n^m options, where m is the number of packages.

proof: each use flag may be on or off.  if we order the use
flags for a package arbitrarly, we can think of them as binary
digits and there would be 2^n possible values.  since there
are m packages, we can consider this an m digit number with
each digit taking the value 0 ... 2^n-1.

if they don't all have the same use flags, we can redo this.
if for package k, there are k_n use flags we would have
2^{k_0}2^{k_1} ... =
	2^(sum k_i}

which i'll grant isn't factorial.  but it's still 2^{sum of use flags
per package}. :-)

i'll give you that this isn't factorial.  :-)  but on the other hand,
if a package might not be installed at all, that's like another use
flag.

- erik