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

On Fri, 20 Mar 2026 at 19:51, Sam James <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> GNU, and I'd say "There are no plans to change this."

Will do.

> "If you want to stay with the GNU coreutils, then you don't need to do
> anything."
>
> > If uutils-coreutils is available for your arch and profile, you
>
> "However, if ..."
>
> > can select it by setting `app-alternatives/coreutils -gnu uutils` in
> > your packages.use.

Sounds better, I'll try something along those lines.

> Tell them explicitly to put it in /etc/portage/package.mask/coreutils
> if they want to.

Ok.

> > To reduce the window during which some utils will not be available at
> > the standard location, make sure that app-alternatives/coreutils is
> > merged straight after the new sys-apps/coreutils, by running
> > `USE="gnu -uutils" emerge -v1 app-alternatives/coreutils` before
> > updating the rest of the system.
>
> You should give an explicit set of commands for users to run in that
> case. People will skim these and/or not read carefully, it is best to be
> very clear.
>
> Tell them how to upgrade (preferred set of commands for this), and that
> if there's conflicts on dep resolution (fails to resolve), it should be
> OK to do a world upgrade instead.

I did give an explicit command here. Maybe I could make it stand out
in its own paragraph ?

> > In the unlikely event of an incomplete update, keep in mind you can
> > still use the prefixed names. If you somehow need to manually fix some
> > symlinks, use the command below and consider reporting the issue:
>
> Consider putting this under a Troubleshooting heading.

This is already in a "preparation and troublesooting" heading, I'll
see if I can split things up.