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

[Stelian Ionescu]

On Tue, 2012-07-24 at 20:55 -0400, Walter Dnes wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 24, 2012 at 11:42:31AM +0200, Ralph Sennhauser wrote
>
> > man 5 portage about files in /etc/portage
> >
> >   make.conf
> >      The global custom settings for Portage. See make.conf(5). If
> >      present, this file will over??? ride settings from /etc/make.conf.
> >
> >
> > > 3. This news item is really useful, since the change has a potential
> > > to break automated builds.
> >
> > We aren't discussing dropping support for the old locations here but
> > about makeing the new location the default.
>
>   This has the potential to cause problems for people who do things "the
> old way", and find that their settings in /etc/make.conf are not being
> applied.  Instead of a news item, maybe we should be looking at warnings
> and/or errors in "emerge"...
>
> 1) If there is a /etc/make.conf, but no /etc/portage/make.conf, emerge
> should generate an ewarn message.  Is emerge smart enough to generate
> only one ewarn even though it's emerging umpteen packages?
>
> 2) If there is a /etc/make.conf *AND* a /etc/portage/make.conf, emerge
> should halt immediately with an error message.  If a user has made a
> /etc/make.conf, they will probably expect it to take effect, which is
> not what's going to happen.  This will save the user forums from being
> hit with the same question over and over about settings in /etc/make.conf
> being ignored.

I'd go for a little more sophistication: it should exit with an error
if /etc/make.conf is present and is not a symlink
to /etc/portage/make.conf, because until all tools support the new
location such a symlink might be necessary

> 3) When support for /etc/make.conf is finally dropped, the presence of
> /etc/make.conf should make emerge halt immediately with an error message.

1+

-- 
Stelian Ionescu a.k.a. fe[nl]ix
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur.
http://common-lisp.net/project/iolib