[gentoo-dev] Re: Gentoostats, SoC 2011

[Duncan]

Rich Freeman posted on Wed, 24 Aug 2011 07:07:54 -0400 as excerpted:

> On Wed, Aug 24, 2011 at 6:48 AM, Patrick Lauer <patrick@g.o>
> wrote:
>> If you sneakily add something to cron.daily by default you can get
>> pretty nice coverage. But I guess anyone trying that in Gentooland will
>> meet some rather unpleasant resistance :)
>
> Well, we could always broadcast the news widely (lists, forums,
> eselect news, and so on).
>
> I'd also make it controllable via use flag.  Put the client and the
> cron.daily file in a package, and then make that a use-dependency of
> something everybody has (the profile if profiles support this (don't
> think they do), and if not pick something that correlates well with
> people who would benefit from this feature.
>
> Users can opt-out via use flag.
>
> You can also start out with it being opt-in (use flag off by default in
> profiles), and then turn it on later (with notice/etc).
>
> The key is to not be sneaky about it.

Agreed on the no-sneaky bit.

The practical question is what to make it a USE flag of?  Baselayout/
openrc?  Portage?

Personally, I'd start with a couple paragraphs in the handbook describing 
the package and why one really /does/ want it installed and setup but 
that Gentoo gives the user the option, as part of the installation 
section, presumably thrown in with choosing the cron and syslog daemons, 
etc.

Then I'd do the PR thing as you mention, pointing out that it's in the 
handbook now, so new users will likely be installing it, and to avoid 
skewing the numbers toward the new installations, existing installations 
should consider it as well.  Existing users aren't likely to want the 
focus to shift to packages only the noobs are likely to install, for 
instance.  Setup a bit of a competition there, and I'd guess you're 
likely to get better buy-in from existing users.

I'd leave the USE flag dependency out of it, at least initially.  It 
could always be added later, if thought necessary.  But I suspect that if 
it's presented well in the handbook, many new users will install it, and 
if that fact is pointed out to existing users in appropriate forum/list 
threads, etc, many existing users will as well, just to "keep up", 
statistically.  Yet if it's a separate package that must be separately 
installed, there's no way people can say it wasn't their choice, as they 
might be able to if it's a USE flag they weren't paying attention to, 
particularly if that flag defaults on.  Make it an active choice and 
people are far more likely to continue with it, too, than if they felt in 
any way that it was pushed on them, with little choice.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman