Re: [gentoo-dev] Proposal: Make developer profiles more difficult to select

[Josh Saddler]

Nikos Chantziaras wrote:
> Reading around on the net, it amazes me how many people are using
> developer profiles for their Gentoo because they think it's for software
> developers and don't see that it's for Gentoo developers and not
> intended for end users.  They know the "Developer" installation profiles
> of other distros and think Gentoo's profiles are just the same (on those
> distros, selecting a dev profile just means it installs GCC + dev libs +
> IDEs by default.)
>
> Some kind of warning or other mechanism that does selecting this profile
> without knowing what you're doing would be a good idea.
>

*shrug* If people would _read_ the documentation, such as 
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/gentoo-upgrading.xml or 
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-amd64.xml?part=1&chap=6#doc_chap2, 
then they would know what the profiles are for.

I don't think we should start making certain profiles harder to use. 
Maybe if profiles.desc had a more explanatory entry on the developer 
profile so that users know what's up with it. Or better yet, include an 
entry in the eselect profile module that prints a brief description of a 
given profile, or at least references the various documentation on profiles.

Oh, and FYI, gcc (and complete toolchain) and various development 
libraries are already installed by default -- that's the nature of using 
a source-based distro; all that stuff needs to be there to do anything, 
so it's already included.

At no point will merely "selecting a new profile" actually install 
anything. As always, you have to go through the package manager if you 
want something installed.