Re: Re: news item: Introduction of app-alternatives/coreutils

Fabian Groffen <[email protected]> Sun, 22 Mar 2026 09:20:45 +0100
Newsgroups	gmane.linux.gentoo.devel
Organization	Gentoo Foundation, Inc.
Message-ID	<[email protected]>
On 22-03-2026 00:30:17 +0000, Sam James wrote:
> Ionen Wolkens <[email protected]> writes:
> 
> > On Sat, Mar 21, 2026 at 11:36:18PM +0500, Anna Vyalkova wrote:
> >> On 2026-03-21, moltonel 3x Combo wrote:
> >> > Hi,
> >> > 
> >> > This news item can also be reviewed at
> >> > https://github.com/gentoo/gentoo-news/pull/5
> >> > The corresponding code PR is at https://codeberg.org/gentoo/gentoo/pulls/89
> >> > This is my first time posting here and I'm not a Gentoo dev, apologies
> >> > if I made mistakes.
> >> > 
> >> > 
> >> > Title: Introduction of app-alternatives/coreutils
> >> > Author: Vincent de Phily <[email protected]>
> >> > Posted: 2026-03-04
> >> > Revision: 1
> >> > News-Item-Format: 2.0
> >> > 
> >> > A new app-alternatives/coreutils ebuild is available, giving the
> >> > choice between sys-apps/coreutils and sys-apps/uutils-coreutils as the
> >> > main coreutils (mkdir, ls, etc) implementation. The default will
> >> > remain the gnu implementation for the foreseeable future.
> >> > 
> >> > The update should be transparent to most users, read on for further
> >> > details.
> >> 
> >> As it has been pointed out, there's barely any need for a news item. It 
> >> looks like an advertisement that most users won't find useful.
> >
> > Admit I'm not fond of the visibility bit either, I'd rather that this
> > goes under the radar (like virtual/zlib did) so a potentially large
> > amount users don't try switching on a whim after reading news (even if
> > we mask USE=uutils).
> >
> > I don't really care about the rust or licensing bits, it's more about
> > potential compatibility issues that may still need to be ironed out.
> > Even moreso when (for Gentoo) build systems are involved.
> >
> > ... albeit a transition without a news warning does also worry me,
> > app-alternatives switches haven't always been the smoothest given
> > users also do all sort of things that may make it go badly, and then
> > this is quite a core package. So not quite sure what I think of this.
> >  
> 
> This is what I'm torn on and I don't yet know. I'd prefer to not have to
> do one indeed given I think it will encourage people or give some
> legitimacy to it being a "reasonable option".

That said, can we reduce the newsitem to people who have 
sys-apps/uutils-coreutils installed?  I suppose that's the set of people
who would really be interested in this virtual.

Thanks,
Fabian



-- 
Fabian Groffen                  80C6 A09A 8D33 302C 1D2C
Gentoo on a different level     06A9 3DC1 26BC 457C 8490
signature.asc (application/pgp-signature, 525 B)