Re: [gentoo-user] emerge --update behavior

[Michael Orlitzky]

On 01/02/2012 10:05 AM, Alan McKinnon wrote:
>
> So when the user tells portage to emerge (not merge) something it goes
> in world as obviously that's what the user wanted. Presumably the user
> knows what they are doing and can deal with both pieces. If the user
> would rather have software hold his hand, that user is better served by
> Windows or Ubuntu or any number of user-centric distros, but probably
> not by Gentoo.
>
> This isn't elitist, it's just the way things are. Portage's job is to
> listen to *you*, not to to tell you what you want. The automation
> portage provides is just the logical conclusion of what should happen
> in future after you emerged something.
>

That unspoken agreement is only beneficial if I have the means by which 
to tell portage what I want it to do. The problem lies at a higher 
level: I think I'm telling portage to update a package, but that's not 
what --update means. It's hard for me to tell portage what I want it to 
do, so the fact that it assumes I know what I'm doing isn't constructive.

I wouldn't call it elitist or blame anyone for the change; the entire 
premise for my argument is that people make mistakes. But I do think 
it's bad engineering: 50% of users are going to think it works the wrong 
way no matter which one you choose, but only one of them screws up your 
system when you get it wrong.