gmane.linux.gentoo.devel

Proposal: Make developer profiles more difficult to select

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.

--

-- 
gentoo-dev <at> lists.gentoo.org mailing list

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Ferris McCormick | 19 Jul 20:53

Re: Proposal: Make developer profiles more difficult to select

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On Sat, 19 Jul 2008 21:39:04 +0300
Nikos Chantziaras <realnc <at> arcor.de> 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.
> 

Maybe it should be called gentoo-developers or
gentoo-developers-only? :)  Actually, that's not really meant as a joke.

> -- 
> gentoo-dev <at> lists.gentoo.org mailing list
> 

Regards,
Ferris
- --
Ferris McCormick (P44646, MI) <fmccor <at> gentoo.org>
Developer, Gentoo Linux (Sparc, Devrel, Userrel, Trustees)

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Josh Saddler | 20 Jul 01:34

Re: Proposal: Make developer profiles more difficult to select

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

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Donnie Berkholz | 20 Jul 02:56

Re: Proposal: Make developer profiles more difficult to select

On 16:34 Sat 19 Jul     , Josh Saddler wrote:
> 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 agree that this is a major problem, and I requested those additions to 
the documentation to alleviate it. If it remains a problem, this is 
something we need to figure out a better fix for. Perhaps we could abuse 
the 'deprecated' file in profiles with this type of message.

Developers are basically our core audience, and we need to make things 
work well for them.

--

-- 
Thanks,
Donnie

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Jeremy Olexa | 20 Jul 01:40

Re: Proposal: Make developer profiles more difficult to select

Nikos Chantziaras wrote:
> Some kind of warning or other mechanism that does selecting this profile 
> without knowing what you're doing would be a good idea.

This isn't enough?

%% grep KNOW *
make.defaults:I_KNOW_WHAT_I_AM_DOING="yes"

;)

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Ben de Groot | 20 Jul 02:48

Re: Proposal: Make developer profiles more difficult to select

Jeremy Olexa wrote:
> Nikos Chantziaras wrote:
>> Some kind of warning or other mechanism that does selecting this
>> profile without knowing what you're doing would be a good idea.
> 
> This isn't enough?
> 
> %% grep KNOW *
> make.defaults:I_KNOW_WHAT_I_AM_DOING="yes"
> 
> ;)
> 
> 
Nobody ever reads make.defaults...

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Duncan | 20 Jul 14:00

Re: Proposal: Make developer profiles more difficult to select

Ben de Groot <yngwin <at> gentoo.org> posted 48828B70.9010006 <at> gentoo.org,
excerpted below, on  Sun, 20 Jul 2008 02:48:48 +0200:

> Jeremy Olexa wrote:
>> Nikos Chantziaras wrote:
>>> Some kind of warning or other mechanism that does selecting this
>>> profile without knowing what you're doing would be a good idea.
>> 
>> This isn't enough?
>> 
>> %% grep KNOW *
>> make.defaults:I_KNOW_WHAT_I_AM_DOING="yes"
>> 
> Nobody ever reads make.defaults...

The point is... well, take a look at for example,
amd64/2008.0/server/profile.bashrc .

During the dev phase there's normally similarly scary warnings about all
the dev profiles.  Sometimes they don't just warn, either, but stop, unless
the appropriate var is set correctly.

While Gentoo in general does try to take reasonable precautions and this 
would seem a case in point, it has never been about keeping those 
determined to work without safety nets as it were, from cutting down 
those very safety nets.  If that's the way they want to run (and 
potentially break), so be it.

OTOH, it could also be argued that either the tested var or the tested
value of that var should include the profile version (say 2008.0), so

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Alec Warner | 20 Jul 21:30

Re: Proposal: Make developer profiles more difficult to select

On Sat, Jul 19, 2008 at 11:39 AM, Nikos Chantziaras <realnc <at> arcor.de> 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.

I don't think the profiles are not intended for end users; if they are
only intended for developers
we could just exclude them from the rsync tree.

That being said I think it is fairly trivial to rename it to
'ebuild-developer'.  Screw all these stupid warnings and
VARS_IN_ALL_CAPS>

Just name shit properly and I'm sure folks can probably figure it out.

I feel very badly for the 'developers' running with 'stricter' or
other insane portage features that basically make the distro unusable
;p

-Alec

>
> --
> gentoo-dev <at> lists.gentoo.org mailing list

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