On Sun, 26 Apr 2015 17:28:47 -0400, Philip Webb wrote:

> > More seriously, once you start working on (3), you'll realize
> > that just because the error msgs suck doesn't mean you can make them
> > better.  
> 
> If they "suck", they're not worth issuing, are they ?

Of course they are, obtuse error messages are better than none.

However, one of the problems with portage's output, and it threw a few
people with the OP's original question, is that portage makes no clear
distinction between error and informational messages. The, not
unreasonable, assumption is that when portage spews out several lines of
information about not being able to install a package because of version
requirements of other packages an error has occurred. In many cases, like
this one, that is simply not the case. Even some colour highlighting of
messages would go a fair way to improving the readability of portage's
output.

However, I am prepared to accept that changes in this department are not
trivial and if no one else is prepared to do something, I can either fix
it myself or accept it as it is. I've been using Gentoo for too long to
be entitled to a refund for what I paid for it.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

Pedestrians come in two types: Quick or Dead.