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Jason Stubbs wrote: |
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> On Friday 04 November 2005 23:26, Xavier Neys wrote: |
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> |
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>>Nathan L. Adams wrote: |
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>> |
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>>>One source: http://errata.gentoo.org/ |
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>>> |
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>>>Push that out to as many alternate sources as you like (RSS feeds, |
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>>>summaries in emerge --news, forums post, etc.), but make it known that |
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>>>the website is *the* source (your alternate sources should point back to |
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>>>it). |
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>> |
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>>I beg to differ. The tree should be the central point because it's the only |
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>>known place where all users can receive relevant information on and for |
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>>each and every system they maintain right before they upgrade. |
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>>The warning and the logic that triggers its display should be part of |
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>>Portage. Sometimes, all that would need to be displayed is "run foo to fix |
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>>bar" or "Please do read http://bleh _before_ you upgrade foo". |
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>> |
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>>If an "Upgrade guide to foo/bar for Gentoo" is required, you need an author |
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>>to write it, not extra code or an extra web site. |
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> |
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> |
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> I probably shouldn't have included the sarcastic comment in my only other |
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> reply to this thread, but the rest of it was completely serious. People are |
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> under the mistaken impression that the ebuild tree is required to use |
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> portage. This is wrong and will become more and more wrong as time goes by. |
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> |
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> If there is not a specific need for this news stuff to go into the tree then |
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> it shouldn't be there. If there is a specific need (ie. it is tied to |
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> packages) what difference is there to the existing ChangeLog? |
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> |
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> -- |
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> Jason Stubbs |
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|
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I am going to summarize a bit, and address your point. |
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|
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Summary: people want small news tidbits to be distributed to all users. |
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Currently the suggestion is tree-based. Portage should have code to |
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detect news elements after a sync and copy relevant elements to a uesr |
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specified news directory. The news should be in a human readable format |
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(XML, RST, pig latin, don't care at this point see below). Portage |
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should post-sync, print a message noting the number of unread but |
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relevant news messages. Users can use whatever means of reading them |
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that they like. IMHO, emerge --news can go to hell in a handbasket, I'd |
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rather just friggin use less, but hey, if you write the code... |
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|
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News messages should contain minimal information necessary to carry |
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relevant information including affected packages, and a link to some |
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sort of documentation, be it gentoo-wiki, or official package docs, or |
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whatever. |
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|
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For those without internet access 24/7, there may be an option required |
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to fetch these links. In the case of say, dial-up where someone only |
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has network say, 4 hours a day, they may wish to sync their tree, and |
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spider the docs links so they may view them locally. Machines with no |
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outside network ( internal production servers ) may also wish to make |
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use of this. In the case of online guides, we cannot necessarily define |
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their content, it may be XML, it may be plain text. I do not see how |
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conceeding that a user may need a web browser SOMEWHERE, is that big of |
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a tradeoff, especially if the content is already locally available. |
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|
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As far as including news in the tree goes, news is repository bound |
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information. Each repository may in fact have relevant news, and in |
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preparation for multiple repositories this is how the news should be |
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handled. It goes with the rest of the repo-specific information. That |
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is why it should be in the tree. |
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|
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However, in the case of a remote tree, some extra API calls may be |
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required. However, it is up to the class implementor to implement those |
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calls, not the original portage team ( unless you want to support remote |
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trees yourself, in which case that duty falls to you ). The only other |
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thing was no tree but a binpkg repo, in which case in savior, binpkg |
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repo should have news elements build in ( a repo, just all built |
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packages ). In stable, news should probably be added to the binpackage |
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if it's listed in the packages-affected. |
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|
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For the XML vs RST. I personally don't want to read XML files in a |
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console, or install anything that makes it look all pretty for me, RST |
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is plenty good enough. Since Ciaran has graciously written all the code |
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for it already, I don't see any reason not to use it. RST is pretty |
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simple to migrate to a new format anyhow, and a converter could be |
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easily whipped up to transform it to guideXMl for errate.g.o if that is |
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what is desired ( not a bad idea IMHO ). |
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|
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I forgot one other thing, that being perhaps a red NEWS that shows up |
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next to affected packages during an emerge -pv <package>, informing you |
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that important news is available for a package you are about to install. |
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|
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So yeah, this is a long thread :0 |
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|
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Alec Warner (Antarus) |
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-- |
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gentoo-dev@g.o mailing list |