Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: news item: changes to stages (make.conf and make.profile)

[Michael Mol]

On Tue, Jul 24, 2012 at 4:24 PM, Ian Stakenvicius <axs@g.o> wrote:
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> On 24/07/12 02:52 PM, Rick "Zero_Chaos" Farina wrote:
>> On 07/24/2012 09:33 AM, Fabian Groffen wrote:
>>> On 24-07-2012 09:24:03 -0400, Rich Freeman wrote:
>>>> I guess this is a matter of opinion, but on Gentoo I don't
>>>> think we're really at much risk of driving people away by
>>>> OVER-communicating.  Our users are used to things changing and
>>>> a certain level of fix-it-yourself, but if we know something is
>>>> going to cause no end of questions it only makes sense to throw
>>>> the users a bone once in a while.
>>
>>> The way in which news items aggressively request your attention,
>>> makes them something that should only be used if it's obvious
>>> it's important for the user (e.g. postfix thing for postfix
>>> users). This particular change seems more something for
>>> -announce, note in the handbook, and something like the
>>> suggestion of a file giving a nice hint.
>>
>>> My impression is that the message is absolutely useless to the
>>> majority of users on their *already installed* system, so don't
>>> make everyone have to see the news item notice a couple of times
>>> and run `eselect news read` just for this.
>>
>>
>> While I completely understand where Fabian is coming from on all
>> this I respectfully disagree.  Long term gentoo users do NOT read
>> the handbook, ever.  I still install new systems with odd hacks
>> that I picked up when gentoo was versioned 1.x and it pleases me, I
>> don't care if those steps are not in the docs anymore or
>> discouraged or whatever.  I've not even glanced at the handbook for
>> years, yet I've installed gentoo on dozens of systems since the
>> last time I did.
>
> Right, but would a news item now (regarding Catalyst) for something
> you do next month be particularily helpful, compared to a
> 'make.conf.moved' reminder file in /etc ?  Or maybe a make.conf
> synlink to profiles/make.conf ?  Or something else within the stage
> itself that makes it obvious that it's changed?

I've often seen cases like these handled by keeping a referenced file
where it's traditionally expected to be found, but leaving a comment
in that file explaining that the content of that file had been moved
to a new location, and the old location is deprecated.

Would that work for a circumstance like this?

-- 
:wq