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

[Michael Mol]

On Tue, Jul 24, 2012 at 9:24 AM, Rich Freeman <rich0@g.o> wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 24, 2012 at 8:09 AM, Fabian Groffen <grobian@g.o> wrote:
>> On 24-07-2012 08:01:40 -0400, Michael Mol wrote:
>>> 3) That news item about udev-181 and a unified /usr is still greeting
>>> new users...and it's still claiming an unmask of 2012-03-19, which is
>>> three months ago. It's quite confusing in that it claims an event is
>>> going to occur, in the past, and it still hasn't occurred.
>>
>> ... and how about that --as-needed one? so annoying, it usually doesn't
>> even apply to the systems I'm installing on.
>
> I'll agree that something needs to be done to clean up past news items
> that are obsolete.  Can we go back and make them expire or just delete
> them?  Yesterday's news isn't news.
>
> 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.

I just want to point out that while established users are likely
accustomed to fixing things from time to time, having non-relevant or
counter-informative[1] communication in news items makes first-time
setups very difficult. Sometimes unavoidable, I'm sure, but I think
it's something that should be avoided if possible.

On the subject of things related to catalyst...I realized I don't even
know what that is, and will likely have some reading to do. My remarks
on the handbook's content about make.conf may or may not be relevant,
depending on if catalyst is a special case.

[1]  That udev-181 stabilization news item was warning of something
which _still_ hasn't come to pass, three months after the indicated
date.

-- 
:wq