From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from lists.gentoo.org (pigeon.gentoo.org [208.92.234.80]) by finch.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8E191138010 for ; Tue, 21 Aug 2012 13:26:36 +0000 (UTC) Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 61F93E0760; Tue, 21 Aug 2012 13:26:18 +0000 (UTC) Received: from smtp.gentoo.org (smtp.gentoo.org [140.211.166.183]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 67CCEE0747 for ; Tue, 21 Aug 2012 13:25:09 +0000 (UTC) Received: from localhost (213.158.217.135.pat.umts.dynamic.t-mobile.pl [213.158.217.135]) (using TLSv1 with cipher DHE-RSA-AES128-SHA (128/128 bits)) (No client certificate requested) (Authenticated sender: aidecoe) by smtp.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id 0DC621B42C9 for ; Tue, 21 Aug 2012 13:25:07 +0000 (UTC) Content-Type: multipart/signed; protocol="application/pgp-signature"; micalg="pgp-sha1"; boundary="===============8547920484668482387==" Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Id: Gentoo Linux mail X-BeenThere: gentoo-dev@lists.gentoo.org Reply-to: gentoo-dev@lists.gentoo.org MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Disposition: inline To: gentoo-dev@lists.gentoo.org Message-ID: <20120821132457.4319.78667@localhost> From: =?utf-8?q?Amadeusz_=C5=BBo=C5=82nowski?= User-Agent: alot/0.3.2 Subject: [gentoo-dev] Useless messages (elog, ewarn, etc) in ebuilds Date: Tue, 21 Aug 2012 15:24:57 +0200 X-Archives-Salt: b5278963-c5dd-4687-bc14-0aaf7b484130 X-Archives-Hash: f41eae78fa372c4aded6249208b59636 --===============8547920484668482387== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Hi, I'd like to call our attention to messages printed by ebuilds for users (elog, ewarn, and so on). We all know that users rarely read them, but this is understandable, since most of them are *completely* useless, most of the rest are confusing, and only couple of them are useful. Who has time to read tens of messages to find one useful sentence? I try to skim all messages and check if there's something new, but if some package has message which fill whole screen and requires from user to make several checks there is almost 100% chance that this new important message is going to be skipped. I'd like to encourage users to fill bugs wrt useless or confusing messages. There are several kind of messages: 1) "If you are upgrading from X to Y, then do Z." I see this message in some packages even I have already version Y or later installed. We have "has_version" function to check if user has actually updated from relevant version. Please use this to not confuse users who installed the package first time or are upgrading from Y to another version. 2) "We no longer do something and do something else." This is case similar to (1). We can check if user has upgraded between versions bringing the changes we want call their attention to. 3) "You can install Y to have support for Z." This actually is optional dependencies problem, but we can unify printing the list at least. For example: * Optional dependencies: * * category1/pkg1 - description1 * category2/pkg2 - description2 4) "If you are using baselayout-2, be sure to add Y to runlevel Z." 5) "Y has been removed. Please remove it from your runlevels." We can easily check if user has added Y to runlevel Z. If this is critical that user has to add Y to runlevel Z, then an ebuild should add it itself and inform user about that. If it is not critical it should inform user that Y could be added to runlevel Z only if installed first time, not every upgrade. Same applies to removal - it can be done by an ebuild. 6) "USE flag noY is deprecated, please use Y." Cannot we check if user has enabled noY? At least we can check if he/she enabled Y. 7) "If you use Y, do something." We can check if Y flag is enabled or Y package is installed and skip the message if it is not. 8) "Example configuration file has been installed to Y." We can check if user has already configured a package (check existence of a config file or its modification time). 9) "Run revdep-rebuild." We can check if package has been upgraded at least and skip the message if it has been installed first time or the same version has been reinstalled. 10) "Y config file has been moved to Z. If you have made changes to Y, migrate them to Z." We can check that in the ebuild and skip message if hasn't done anything to the config file. 11) "If something happens, install Y." We can at least check if Y is already installed. *) Other kind of information which appears after EVERY installation. All howtos should go to Gentoo Docs! -- = Amadeusz =C5=BBo=C5=82nowski --===============8547920484668482387== MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Description: signature Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name="signature.asc"; charset="us-ascii" -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.19 (GNU/Linux) iQEcBAABAgAGBQJQM4wpAAoJEPATRTHh2/q1v8kIAKBreCWNsa5zr8fVGiSjsoCL pb8zE3sv59WXTQDsQaBQX2tMWMgA7ZhPD9R+IQw2ydRBHCRgWPNadd/MFJpHK3/T EtCPo61l9m++ZRYqOWNl+LOJZa6KgPu5X2ruuhwylF1pkqQYnMhHQQpVqFww91yD Jy5oQdrOiQG0J0C5Q23nx+7m57VevQVRKMOVGjCgtWVY9MgNl+0ULayLWWEd4KUt ZcGdtu0O7Q1bIkAVfUXvq7FRFKWiAkPfT31kqO80TN45dGVMsXNw4q+Yh1CN4Byw zwNK4C/Q7UsZAkVNcKI65IZsst3ewWtC9ZLJ/+xCPO7lUf1RbbesIet0Rv2lpmQ= =iKQs -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --===============8547920484668482387==--