Many users that install with ~arch (or upgrade to ~arch afterward) find themselves with a completely broken system after realizing the error of their ways and downgrading to arch. Perhaps a recommendation to only use "emerge -U" as opposed to "emerge -u" and 'downgrade' from ~arch to arch over a period of time?
Once chosen for ~arch we can *never* guarantee that their system will remain functional. Using "emerge -U" or not, it is always a risk. What we can do is see if we can demotivate people to use ~arch even more, but I believe that wont help as most users really want to have a bleeding edge system. Even if I used <blink>DO NOT CONVERT YOUR SYSTEM TO ~ARCH</blink> they would just ignore it.
Sure, I agree that we can't stop users from running ~x86 - I'm one of them :) What I'm saying though, is that if somebody is running ~x86 and tries to downgrade directly to x86, we can almost always guarantee that their system will become broken. Even if emerge -U isn't mentioned in the handbook, it should perhaps be mentioned that once on the bleeding edge there's no turning back.
IMHO, users who run ~arch should know exactly what they're doing. There is a section in the handbook that introduces the usage of --upgradeonly (you might want to take a look at part 2 chap 2 on "Portage and Software") before the usage of ~arch, so i see no reason why people wouldn't know that --upgradeonly exists if they can use ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~arch". Some more, the --pretend flag is always used in the code listing all over the handbook =)
it's not that users don't know that -p and -U exist. what i'm talking about is that it seems to be the natural belief (for those that don't research first) that moving back to arch from ~arch won't cause any problems when in fact the downgrade of glibc especially is enough to require a reinstall.
Created attachment 24069 [details, diff] Patch to hb-working-portage.xml I don't like warnings if they aren't meant to really really warn people. This is imho more common sense. I've entered a paragraph (as this patch shows) that should deal with users that want to go ~arch'ing :) Would this be okay?
That was swift! (pun intended) Clear, concise, a little bit fierce - I like it! Great work!
Patch looks good, and jason is happy with that: ---- <jstubbs> Erwin`: just checked out the patch. i'm happy with that. it might make less users run ~arch which should increase the quality of bug reports!? --- SwifT, not irc'ing anymore? :o
Committed. No, not on IRC atm, it's a bit hectic here with too many exams and too little time.
