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Apparently, though unproven, at 23:39 on Tuesday 07 June 2011, Mark Knecht did |
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opine thusly: |
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|
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> I have no problem with saying someone needs to understand what less |
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> does. less isn't important. It's just the example at hand today. The |
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> 'problem' that I'm trying to get closer to answering is how does |
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> anyone other than a Gentoo dev, assuming some reasonable amount of |
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> effort, know that less isn't called by some script somewhere during |
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> the init process? How does one come to understand that maybe less is |
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> just as import as python is to the emerge process? (and I know it |
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> isn't...) |
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> |
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> What I didn't like about this issue popping up yesterday is that it |
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> altered the idea that average users never touch anything in @system. |
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> Iin fact, TTBOMK I've never in 11 or 12 years of running Gentoo ever |
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> done an emerge -C on a @system package until this morning when I |
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> removed nano. |
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|
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OK, now we're tracking. |
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|
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In the specific case of less, the answer is self-evident - it isn't needed. A |
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dev would just know that. More likely, he would assume he knows that. |
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In the general case, they suck their thumbs and guess. Some think more than |
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others before they guess, they should all do some basic tests to catch severe |
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errors before committing changes and additions, and all of them rely on |
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unstable users finding other oddities and bugs. |
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|
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flameeyes gave some hints and clues into how this works on his blog recently: |
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|
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http://blog.flameeyes.eu/2011/05/25/psa-packages-failing-to-install-with-new- |
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openrc-based-stages-missing-users-and-groups |
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|
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It's specific to openrc, but if you follow his blog it's easy to read between |
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the lines to see what he's getting at usually. |
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|
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I don't think I've ever met a dev that releases code any other way :-) |
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None of the above is fact and all of it is my opinion but I do think I'm close |
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to the mark. |
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-- |
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alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com |