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

[Ian Stakenvicius]

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On 24/07/12 02:52 PM, Rick "Zero_Chaos" Farina wrote:
> On 07/24/2012 09:33 AM, Fabian Groffen wrote:
>> On 24-07-2012 09:24:03 -0400, Rich Freeman wrote:
>>> 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.
>
>> The way in which news items aggressively request your attention,
>> makes them something that should only be used if it's obvious
>> it's important for the user (e.g. postfix thing for postfix
>> users). This particular change seems more something for
>> -announce, note in the handbook, and something like the
>> suggestion of a file giving a nice hint.
>
>> My impression is that the message is absolutely useless to the
>> majority of users on their *already installed* system, so don't
>> make everyone have to see the news item notice a couple of times
>> and run `eselect news read` just for this.
>
>
> While I completely understand where Fabian is coming from on all
> this I respectfully disagree.  Long term gentoo users do NOT read
> the handbook, ever.  I still install new systems with odd hacks
> that I picked up when gentoo was versioned 1.x and it pleases me, I
> don't care if those steps are not in the docs anymore or
> discouraged or whatever.  I've not even glanced at the handbook for
> years, yet I've installed gentoo on dozens of systems since the
> last time I did.

Right, but would a news item now (regarding Catalyst) for something
you do next month be particularily helpful, compared to a
'make.conf.moved' reminder file in /etc ?  Or maybe a make.conf
synlink to profiles/make.conf ?  Or something else within the stage
itself that makes it obvious that it's changed?

The main issue I see with this is that the news item isn't relevant to
what people have emerged or will emerge (except for the small
percentage that use catalyst, of course); and I expect that this will
cause more confusion and grief to the user base than help (even if the
news items says in big capital letters that nothing needs to change on
their current install)


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