[gentoo-dev] Re: News item: World file handling changes in Portage-2.2

[Steve Long]

Marius Mauch wrote:

> Second for the suggestions on how to handle the transition:
> - treating 'world' and '@world' differently is a no go from my POV. One
> of the main reasons to implement them as sets was to remove special
> case code in emerge, so I'm quite opposed to adding new special cases
> instead. And I'm quite sure that such a separation would cause
> confusion, and some isues regarding (end-user) documentation.

We're talking about one special case in the command-line processing, to
support the existing usage that all our users are used to. It adds
practically nothing in execution time, simply expanding to @system @world,
and means that users who don't want to know about sets, or are not thinking
in set terms at the time of using emerge, will get the result they expect.
Also it makes it easier for users who don't want @system included in
@world, eg for easy use of -e @system followed by -e @world.

> Though honestly I don't think this issue is as big as some other
> people make it. People might miss some updates. The same would happen
> if we remove packages from @system, or people switch profiles (so
> @system changes).
 
Or you could just do as above and people wouldn't miss any updates, and
you'd have less support burden from users who aren't bothered about sets,
who can carry on using their systems as they always have.