Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Split desktop profile patches & news item for review

[Theo Chatzimichos]

On Friday 12 March 2010 10:36:57 Mart Raudsepp wrote:
> On Thu, 2010-03-11 at 23:20 +0100, Ben de Groot wrote:
> > On 11 March 2010 21:20, Mart Raudsepp <leio@g.o> wrote:
> > > On Thu, 2010-03-11 at 02:36 +0100, Ben de Groot wrote:
> > >> Seeing as there were no further comments, I think we are good to go!
> > >
> > > I suggest reading my comments...
> >
> > Unless I missed something, you didn't make any comments on this
> > thread.
>
> The subthread got renamed to more fit its purpose.
>
> > If you mean the thread you started that tangentially took off from this
> > one, about eselect profile improvements: I support that proposal,
> > but it will take some time to get implemented. Is anyone already
> > working on that?
> >
> > In the meantime I see no reason for that to halt or postpone the
> > current desktop profile improvements as prepared by Theo.
>
> I argued that it's a bad idea to add yet more profiles, when we could
> avoid that (while even improving things additionally).
>
> But I guess I'll have to bring some direct points why I think
> implementing the alternative as I described ASAP is better than ever
> doing this gnome/kde subprofile thing:
>
> * The split desktop profile plan retroactively modifies 2008.0 and 10.0
> profiles. Not a good thing for obvious reasons. (Of course the
> subprofiles could also be added together with a new release, as proposed
> for the alternative idea)
> * Adding yet more subprofiles, increasing repoman and pcheck time,
> possibly confusing users (migration things; changing USE flags in a
> perceived stable release profile leading to unexpected --newuse
> triggering, etc)
> * Making it harder to get both GNOME and KDE things out of a profile
> (though the common things in desktop profile right now is quite
> suboptimal for GNOME)
> * Putting the problem of suboptimal subprofiles handling under the
> carpet again, greatly reducing the motivation for people to work on the
> alternative better proposal


First of all, I'll delay the commit since I need to write documentation 
patches, and I won't be able, as I'll leave soon for a conference and will be 
back on Monday. Maybe I'll find time to prepare something there, but I can't 
promise.

Now, to reply to Mart:

I found your proposal about mixing profiles awesome, and I am willing to work 
on this. In fact, I'm going to raise the issue on KDE's meeting this Thursday 
at 20:00 UTC. Any freedesktop team members will be welcome there. But I'm not 
going to step up from the current workaround I worked on, as things are not 
that tragic. I will document and announce everything, and I will be watching 
forums and IRC for some days to provide support. The only real problem in my 
opinion would be this, people get confused about useflags and unexpected --
newuse results. (btw I already announced it once in my blog, I will do it 
again, and we'll also provide a news item, so I doubt this is even a real 
problem as well). To sum up:
1) Not oblious to me? / Not bad from my point of view?
2) I doubt users will be conflicted, I'll benchmark repoman and hit back
3) agreed, but i don't see a problem there
4) I'll be the motivator for this :)
-- 
Theo Chatzimichos (tampakrap)
Gentoo KDE/Qt Teams
blog.tampakrap.gr