[gentoo-dev] Re: [RFC] Saving package emerge output (einfo, elog, ewarn, etc.) somewhere official
Joe Peterson lava...@gentoo.org posted 4946dd7f.80...@gentoo.org, excerpted below, on Mon, 15 Dec 2008 15:43:11 -0700: I don't think it's our responsibility to put documentation everywhere someone might conceivably look for information. I agree with this statement, but I wasn't implying we should duplicate information everywhere. I wanted to explore this as an opportunity to re-think if having an official de facto spot for gentoo readmes would make sense, thereby saving log output in a useful place where users would learn to look regularly. I agree this would only be reasonable if it were the right thing, architecturally, for Gentoo, not just for this one user's issue. That suggests an interesting possibility to me. Let's see if anyone else likes it. What about some place on the web, maybe on packages, having a single location with all the standard messages, listed by package and version. I'm picturing a single reference location where someone can look up the package and see all the routine postinst messages, etc, that it spits out. Perhaps treat metapackages such that they group together all the messages from the collected sub-packages. Then when we (as users) think about a big upgrade, we can go and research just what sort of thing the package maintainers already anticipate, and can thus better prepare ourselves. -- Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs. Every nonfree program has a lord, a master -- and if you use the program, he is your master. Richard Stallman
[gentoo-dev] Re: [RFC] Saving package emerge output (einfo, elog, ewarn, etc.) somewhere official
Hi, Dale [EMAIL PROTECTED]: If you have a GUI on your system, give this a look: app-portage/elogviewer That should help you a lot. I been using it for a good while and it works pretty well. I do wish it had little flags in the list of packages that have been installed. Sort of a short and sweet notice there is something there without actually have to look. Maybe a red flag when there is something really serious to know and other colors for other things. app-portage/elogv (ncurses) and app-portage/kelogviewer (Qt based) are really nice, too. Unfortunately the two GUI variants are homeless, so improvements won't happen from the original upstream. V-Li -- Christian Faulhammer, Gentoo Lisp project URL:http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/lisp/, #gentoo-lisp on FreeNode URL:http://www.faulhammer.org/ signature.asc Description: PGP signature
[gentoo-dev] Re: [RFC] Saving package emerge output (einfo, elog, ewarn, etc.) somewhere official
On Sun, 30 Nov 2008 10:11:49 -0700 Joe Peterson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Peter Volkov wrote: Seems that we already have everything you dreamed about: http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml?part=3chap=1#doc_chap4 Take a look at PORTAGE_ELOG_SYSTEM. It even can send that messages by mail :) This is all cool, indeed! :) I suspect, however, that most users have never played with these variables. I think that saving this info in the portage db or making it more default/official in some way could be a great help. The core problem is, I think, that many users do not know where to look when having trouble, so they may not even realize that what they need is in the log info. How more official can you get? :P By default we do save the logs, and we provide a complete logging facility that can even log to syslog, mail them to you, or run arbitrary commands. We link to the build log on build failure. We reprint all log messages at the end of the emerge by default. If the user ignores these, and doesn't read the manual, then... I think educating the user about systems we already have in place beats adding new ones. -- gcc-porting, by design, by neglect treecleaner, for a fact or just for effect wxwidgets @ gentoo EFFD 380E 047A 4B51 D2BD C64F 8AA8 8346 F9A4 0662 signature.asc Description: PGP signature
[gentoo-dev] Re: [RFC] Saving package emerge output (einfo, elog, ewarn, etc.) somewhere official
Ben de Groot [EMAIL PROTECTED] posted [EMAIL PROTECTED], excerpted below, on Mon, 01 Dec 2008 04:10:31 +0100: The info is there, but most users never read more than part 1 of the Handbook (that is, the installation part). We could, and should in my opinion, add a big fat warning towards the end of the installation part, that there is extremely useful information to be found in the other parts of the Handbook. Maybe we could especially mention some of the more useful topics, and the elog system would be one of them. Well, at the end of the Handbook, Pt 1, Installation, in Chapter 12, Where to go from here, it already mentions Pt 2, Working with Gentoo. It really should mention Pts 3 4, Working with Portage and Gentoo Network Configuration, as well, the chapter of interest here of course being in Working with Portage. So yes, we really could improve the end of the Handbook, pt 1, Where to go from here, having it mention Pt 3 4 as well as Pt 2. That's something we can and should do, absolutely. Beyond that, however, Gentoo has never been about hand-holding. It expects you to be big enough to cross the street on your own without further hand-holding if it provides the stop light telling you when it's safe to do so; to be able to find and read the documentation, which Gentoo does have a generally excellent reputation in the community for providing, on your own. There are plenty of other distributions out there for those who prefer to let the distribution make the decisions and take the responsibility. Gentoo has always been about giving the user the ability to decide and configure that for himself, after reading the documentation where necessary. If the user can't do that after we've gone to all the work of providing both the means and the documentation on configuring, right there in the official handbook even, with links and references to the handbook quite well distributed already, well, maybe that user really /should/ be looking at a different distribution. -- Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs. Every nonfree program has a lord, a master -- and if you use the program, he is your master. Richard Stallman
