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

On Fri, 20 Mar 2026 at 22:29, Eli Schwartz <[email protected]> wrote:
> > The update should be transparent to most users, read on for further
> > details.
>
> If it is truly transparent, I wonder that we need a news post.

"should be transparent for most". We're being cautious here, coreutils
is a critical package. And even for those trouble-free updates, it's
worth mentioning the upcoming file collision warning and how to
actually switch if people are interested, like we did for previous
app-alternative ebuilds.

> > If uutils-coreutils is available for your arch and profile, you
> > can select it by setting `app-alternatives/coreutils -gnu uutils` in
> > your packages.use.
> >
> > If you want to postpone or revert the transition, mask the
> > corresponding ebuild versions:
>
> ... this sounds like advice for "the default is switching to uutils, how
> do I opt out" -- but the actual thing is opt-in.

I'll see if I can make this clearer.

> Please remove ALL advice on using uutils, and add it to a wiki page instead.

That feels overkill. IMHO showing how to select the alternative is a
basic bit of info that deserves to be here. And in the end, it's just
a USE flag, no need for a wiki page.

> ... but this is more distracting messages regarding "nothing changed".
> None of this is useful to news readers.

I feel that "completions might not work as you expect" is an
interesting gotcha to document, but if there's consensus I can remove
that paragraph.

> Overall I recommend completely re-aligning this News item to match the
> purpose of the news: tell people affected by a default/mandatory change
> to packages/repos/profiles they have installed or used, that *they* will
> *need* to do or be careful about something.

I feel that's already essentially what this new item is doing.

> But the support migration to unlock choice is itself something
> potentially worthy of a news item, solely because it may break systems
> which do not intend to locally set any USE flags. Thus, the news item
> should stick to describing how to successfully update.

Just to be clear: there's no need to set any USE flag to get a
successful update.