gmane.linux.gentoo.devel

developer profile

I just had a user in bugzilla who thought, the developer profile would be for software developers,
not just for gentoo developers. Probably he is not the only one.

What about either adding some big warning on portage output or renaming this profile to e.g.
"gentoodeveloper"?

--

-- 
Thomas Sachau

Gentoo Linux Developer

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Duncan | 5 Oct 17:08

Re: developer profile

Thomas Sachau <tommy <at> gentoo.org> posted 48E8B217.8020505 <at> gentoo.org,
excerpted below, on  Sun, 05 Oct 2008 14:24:55 +0200:

> I just had a user in bugzilla who thought, the developer profile would
> be for software developers, not just for gentoo developers. Probably he
> is not the only one.
> 
> What about either adding some big warning on portage output or renaming
> this profile to e.g. "gentoodeveloper"?
>

There's a thread in the archive discussing this.  The conclusion then 
seemed to be that the traditional profile.bashrc test for 
I_KNOW_WHAT_I_AM_DOING=yes, with a suitable warning if it wasn't set, 
should be enough.

The problem with that is that the profile itself sets that var in 
profiles/targets/developer/make.defaults, so anyone using the profile has 
it set automatically, rather defeating the purpose of the test in the 
first place.

The solution would be to remove that bit from profiles/targets/developer 
(and other places it may be set in the profiles, forcing those using the 
developer profiles to actually set it themselves.  If they don't, they 
get the warning.  If they see the warning and set it anyway, well, one 
would hope they /do/ know what they are doing, and if they don't, as the 
saying goes "If it breaks, you (they) get to keep the pieces!"

I'd suggest a somewhat less generic var as well.  Perhaps 
I_AM_A_GENTOO_TESTER_AND_I_KNOW_WHAT_I_AM_DOING, or maybe

(Continue reading)

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Steve Long | 7 Oct 13:59

Re: developer profile

Duncan wrote:

> Thomas Sachau <tommy <at> gentoo.org> posted 48E8B217.8020505 <at> gentoo.org,
> excerpted below, on  Sun, 05 Oct 2008 14:24:55 +0200:
> 
>> I just had a user in bugzilla who thought, the developer profile would
>> be for software developers, not just for gentoo developers. Probably he
>> is not the only one.
>> 
>> What about either adding some big warning on portage output or renaming
>> this profile to e.g. "gentoodeveloper"?
>>
> 
> There's a thread in the archive discussing this.  The conclusion then
> seemed to be that the traditional profile.bashrc test for
> I_KNOW_WHAT_I_AM_DOING=yes, with a suitable warning if it wasn't set,
> should be enough.
> 
> The problem with that is that the profile itself sets that var in
> profiles/targets/developer/make.defaults, so anyone using the profile has
> it set automatically, rather defeating the purpose of the test in the
> first place.
> 
> The solution would be to remove that bit from profiles/targets/developer
> (and other places it may be set in the profiles, forcing those using the
> developer profiles to actually set it themselves.  If they don't, they
> get the warning.

That seems like a clean (and simple) solution.

(Continue reading)

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Josh Saddler | 5 Oct 21:30

Re: developer profile

Thomas Sachau wrote:
> I just had a user in bugzilla who thought, the developer profile would be for software developers,
> not just for gentoo developers. Probably he is not the only one.
> 
> What about either adding some big warning on portage output or renaming this profile to e.g.
> "gentoodeveloper"?

I think this discussion has popped up before on both this list and on
gentoo-doc. I added some substantial warnings to the documentation that
discusses profiles per Donnie's request if I remember right. The bottom
line is that you can try to make things as tricky as you want; users
will still try to do it because they don't bother to read any
documentation. That's something you can't force 'em to do.

Still, perhaps adding some output would be good, though I'm not sure
how. eselect doesn't seem to be setup to display anything; "eselect
profile set 9" to switch to "amd64/2008.0" doesn't even return a message
that it was set.