Re: Question about -dev thread "Introduction of app-alternatives/coreutils"

Ionen Wolkens <[email protected]> writes:

> At this stage this is just a proposed change, it doesn't sound 
> like
> it'll go forward for the foreseeable future in this current 
> state given
> the opposition (other less invasive methods were suggested but 
> the
> author does not seem interested, meaning we'll likely keep the 
> status
> quo).
>
> Should also add the change was proposed by a contributor (aka, 
> *not*
> a Gentoo developer), and there is nothing official about this 
> unless
> developers decides they want to go forward with it.
>
> aka, nothing that you (as a user) need to feel concerned about.
>
> It is also not meant to replace coreutils in Gentoo, just 
> provide the
> option for those that want to use the alternative.

i've been following that discussion myself - though i'm not 
actually subscribed to -dev - and i can imagine people being 
concerned by this post by the (as you say, non-dev) contributor in 
reply to a question asked by Dale[a]:

>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.

which comes across to me as implying that the contributor's 
proposal _would_ cause breakage, regardless of whether people 
wanted to switch to using uutils or not.


Alexis.

[a] 
https://archives.gentoo.org/gentoo-dev/CANQow5KPWC6bt0yg7QXw_xwKCYCjmdL=R1CGtQa7mUuA6OBgyQ@mail.gmail.com/