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

[Rich Freeman]

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