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

On Mon, 23 Mar 2026 at 22:15, Dale <[email protected]> wrote:
> If I just ignore the news item and don't switch, what is going to
> break?

Does the news item not make this clear ? If you update world as usual:
1 You will recompile coreutils
2 Your system now has some critical utils (such as /usr/bin/install)
present but not owned by any ebuild
3 And some less important utils (like /usr/bin/df) missing
4 Portage will then proceed with a potentially long merge list
(hopefully not needing one of the missing utils)
5 Until it reaches app-alternatives/coreutils, which creates owned
symlinks for all the utils

The breakage is step 3. The news item explains how to skip step 4, to
shorten the breakage duration. If you wanted to opt-in to uutils
immediately, it would be compiled at step 4 or 0.

> I think the point here for me at least, maybe a few devs as
> well, does this affect enough people to need a news item?

Very hard to tell how many people will have a long step 4, and will
experience a failed build or other issue. This does not depend on
whether you want uutils or not.