On Tue, Jan 15, 2013 at 9:39 AM, Dirkjan Ochtman <d...@gentoo.org> wrote: > On Tue, Jan 15, 2013 at 3:27 PM, Ian Stakenvicius <a...@gentoo.org> wrote: >> Bikeshedding, but I'm thinking that it would be better to provide a >> whole separate command for this rather than a quicker convenience >> option -- the command would, for instance, also include @world as the >> target by default. As for the options, i'd recommend adding --ask and >> - --verbose
++ to including @world and --ask / --verbose. We really want a simple command that "does it all" with fairly conservative settings. Anybody who runs debian knows that the only two commands you really need to know are apt-get --update and apt-get --upgrade. We really need to keep things just that simple. apt-get prompts if the install pulls in extra dependencies, and is fairly verbose. I don't really care if it is a separate command or built-into emerge. One thing the command probably should do is echo the full command expansion. Then users know exactly what is going on under the hood, and if they need to tweak the command they can just do a copy-paste or define their own alias. >> >> The advantage I see for it being an extra command is that it's a clear >> one-purpose convenience command; > > Yeah, but this is another command to remember. I'm not sure I agree here - for the "typical" Gentoo user it might be the only command to remember. > I was rather wondering about the other direction: include --deep and > --reinstall=changed-use in an --update action. This would actually > make more sense to me; I think those options still make sense for > single-package or other-set emerges? I'm not keen on redefining existing options. That is going to lead to a bazillion complaints about broken scripts, and sometimes you really do just want to do a partial resolution. > > I don't mind adding --ask and --verbose, but I think they should be > orthogonal. For the one-size-fits-all default command, I think they should be defaults. By all means have --quiet and --non-interactive or whatever, but I think the default should be ask and verbose. Keep in mind this is the command that newbies will run. It doesn't mean that any existing options will be disabled. The goal is that the Gentoo handbook will introduce new users to maintaining their systems by giving them a single command that they should run daily, or whatever. It should nearly guarantee that users will not run into valid bugs, and if for some reason the upgrade path on some package requires deviation from this command it should be considered as a news item. The side goal is to get rid of unnecessary diversity. I'm fine with users doing things differently because they have different needs and we should of course support this. However, I think too often every Gentoo box ends up being maintained completely differently just because we're so wishy-washy with the defaults. We shouldn't be afraid of declaring a reasonable default, and then just letting individuals change it. Rich
