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

[William Kenworthy]

On Tue, 2012-07-24 at 07:20 -0400, Rich Freeman wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 24, 2012 at 7:07 AM, Fabian Groffen <grobian@g.o> wrote:
> > I don't know about general consensus.  In my opinion, it's plain spam to
> > existing users.  (And that would IMO be the xth news item in a row to be
> > spam.)
>
> Can't say I agree here.  Some news items have been more useful than
> others, but I doubt the typical Gentoo user (who does not subscribe to
> -dev) would think that many of the past messages have been spam.
>
> Right now news is our only mechanism to warn users that something is
> about to happen BEFORE it happens.  Anytime I talk to somebody who has
> left Gentoo the #1 thing I tend to hear is that they were tired of
> things just breaking without warning.  Even following -dev I've been
> surprised by the odd upgrade - I can imagine the typical user would be
> even more confused.
>
> Long-time Gentoo users aren't going to notice in the handbook that the
> location of /etc/make.conf has moved - I know that if I'm doing an
> install I tend to use the handbook as a checklist but I skim through
> it so fast that I doubt I'd notice a big change.  They're going to
> appreciate a heads-up.  The only people who wouldn't consider it news
> are those following this list, and judging by the state of this thread
> you'll already have read 40 posts on the topic, so the 41st won't be
> that big of a deal.
>
> Rich
>

Apologies for butting in as a user:

As a user of Gentoo from about 2002 or so, with multiple gentoo systems,
this thread is the first I have heard of make.conf moving ... cant
imagine I am the only one!  and are you about to break our systems
unannounced (again) ? - its not spam to give us a heads up, even if its
just reassurance.

Sorry, but I would rather know.
BillK