eselect news is good

Message

sera · Post by **sera** » Wed Apr 08, 2009 7:16 pm

Yup that did it. Thanks timeBandit. So the file to be removed didn't exist in the first place.

So there are four "news" in total and one is from 2007.

yabbadabbadont · Post by **yabbadabbadont** » Wed Apr 08, 2009 9:09 pm

Thanks for the info TimeBandit. I was presented with the news item for the xorg update, but there were three other, older, items there that I had never seen. I'm guessing that I didn't see them either because none of them applied to my system (sparc, tetex, and paludis) or that you had to have had a newer version of portage installed at the time of the sync.

Ormaaj · Post by **Ormaaj** » Thu Apr 09, 2009 7:42 pm

Wouldn't it be better to distribute news through some already established standard than to invent a new gentoo/portage-specific tool? RSS for example. I like the unix philosophy of "Do one thing and do it well."

This is a job for a feed-reader; Not a configuration tool, or a package manager.

Paapaa · Post by **Paapaa** » Thu Apr 09, 2009 8:33 pm

Ormaaj wrote:This is a job for a feed-reader; Not a configuration tool, or a package manager.

I disagree. This is the best place to announce package installation related stuff: straight after you sync the Portage tree. And it gets noticed with 100% confidence.

timeBandit · Post by **timeBandit** » Thu Apr 09, 2009 8:33 pm

Ormaaj wrote:Wouldn't it be better to distribute news through some already established standard than to invent a new gentoo/portage-specific tool? ... This is a job for a feed-reader; Not a configuration tool, or a package manager.

In this case, no. This mechanism is to ensure news items of critical importance cannot be missed.

I suggest you read at least the first few sections (through Requirements) of GLEP 42, [glep=0042]Critical News Reporting[/glep], which specified this enhancement.

curtis119 · Post by **curtis119** » Thu Apr 09, 2009 11:36 pm

Paapaa wrote:
Ormaaj wrote:This is a job for a feed-reader; Not a configuration tool, or a package manager.
I disagree. This is the best place to announce package installation related stuff: straight after you sync the Portage tree. And it gets noticed with 100% confidence.

Yup. I couldn't agree more.

avx · Post by **avx** » Fri Apr 10, 2009 12:16 am

Code: Select all

hikaru ~ # eselect news list
Unread news items:
  (none found)              
Read news items:
  (none found)              
hikaru ~ # rm /var/lib/gentoo/news/news-gentoo.*
rm: cannot remove `/var/lib/gentoo/news/news-gentoo.*': No such file or directory
hikaru ~ # find /usr/portage/metadata/news -mindepth 1 -type d -printf "%P\n" >/var/lib/gentoo/news/news-gentoo.unread
hikaru ~ # eselect news list
Unread news items:
  (none found)              
Read news items:
  (none found)              
hikaru ~ #

Code: Select all

hikaru ~ # ls /usr/portage/metadata/news/
2007-05-04-paludis-0.24  2009-01-04-sparc-multilib  2009-04-06-tetex  2009-04-06-x_server-1_5  timestamp.chk

have run `emerge eselect eselect-news` twice before the above...

poly_poly-man · Post by **poly_poly-man** » Fri Apr 10, 2009 12:22 am

#1: I sync and update daily (overnight cron job), and usually don't look too deeply into the mails (especially not the sync one), so I will miss these messages.

#2: eselect news list says there are no items.

pandaxiongmao · Post by **pandaxiongmao** » Sun Apr 12, 2009 4:09 am

eselect news isn't intuitive; I didn't know how to use it until I stumbled upon this thread. It sucks when keyboard+mouse suddenly failed to function after xorg-server update.

sera · Post by **sera** » Sun Apr 12, 2009 5:32 am

Not intuitive? It's the same syntax as all the other eselect tools.

yabbadabbadont · Post by **yabbadabbadont** » Sun Apr 12, 2009 5:35 am

sera wrote:Not intuitive? It's the same syntax as all the other eselect tools.

So, are you arguing for or against him?

sera · Post by **sera** » Sun Apr 12, 2009 5:43 am

yabbadabbadont wrote:
sera wrote:Not intuitive? It's the same syntax as all the other eselect tools.
So, are you arguing for or against him?

You got me .

V-Li · Post by **V-Li** » Sun Apr 12, 2009 9:23 am

yabbadabbadont wrote:I was presented with the news item for the xorg update, but there were three other, older, items there that I had never seen. I'm guessing that I didn't see them either because none of them applied to my system (sparc, tetex, and paludis)

News items are filtered by what the news item specifies:
Display-If-Installed (for a specific package), Display-If-Keywords (guess!) or Display-If-Profile (for a specific profile set) control that behaviour.
The news items are very near to a RFC-conform email header, so it reuses existing "technology", see my small step-by-step guide on the planet.

Ok, thanks for the praise (I wrote the teTeX and X.org news items), but I would like to have them out earlier, that's why I wrote the short guide for others who might find the GLEP hard to read (which it actually is if you only want to ship out a news item).

Cyker · Post by **Cyker** » Sun Apr 12, 2009 10:21 am

eselect news ftw

Encourage its use, for it is nifty!

arnvidr · Post by **arnvidr** » Sun Apr 12, 2009 12:52 pm

So where do these news show up automatically?

V-Li · Post by **V-Li** » Sun Apr 12, 2009 6:38 pm

arnvidr wrote:So where do these news show up automatically?

If the news item applies to you, you will be informed similar to changed configuration files.

yabbadabbadont · Post by **yabbadabbadont** » Sun Apr 12, 2009 10:35 pm

V-Li wrote:
arnvidr wrote:So where do these news show up automatically?
If the news item applies to you, you will be informed similar to changed configuration files.

In other (more obvious) words, in the status messages that are displayed at the end of an "emerge --sync" operation.

avx · Post by **avx** » Mon Apr 13, 2009 11:26 am

If the news item applies to you, you will be informed similar to changed configuration files.

Aha, so I don't get the news concerning xorg-server-1.5x, because I'm already on 1.6? Good to know.

arnvidr · Post by **arnvidr** » Mon Apr 13, 2009 4:06 pm

yabbadabbadont wrote:
V-Li wrote:
arnvidr wrote:So where do these news show up automatically?
If the news item applies to you, you will be informed similar to changed configuration files.
In other (more obvious) words, in the status messages that are displayed at the end of an "emerge --sync" operation.

So I can't automate syncs if I want to be notified of these news items?

timeBandit · Post by **timeBandit** » Mon Apr 13, 2009 5:18 pm

arnvidr wrote:So I can't automate syncs if I want to be notified of these news items?

Mail yourself the output of the sync job (and read it

) or run eselect news list on a routine basis. Another option is a separate cron job to check for news and mail a summary:

Code: Select all

#!/bin/bash

if [ $(eselect news count) -ne 0 ] ; then
    eselect news list
fi

arnvidr · Post by **arnvidr** » Tue Apr 14, 2009 6:28 am

I don't have it really automated, but I have an alias that updates overlays and stuff after it syncs the tree, but I guess I could just change the order, or put eselect news list at the end of the operations. One question though, does the list of read news items get shortened once in a while? I'm really not interested in reading news from 2007 about a program I've never used.

timeBandit · Post by **timeBandit** » Tue Apr 14, 2009 2:25 pm

arnvidr wrote:[D]oes the list of read news items get shortened once in a while?

Like everything else in the tree, news items deleted upstream would be removed when you sync. However, I would not expect that to happen often, given the importance of news broadcasting and the possibility of long sync intervals for some users.

V-Li · Post by **V-Li** » Thu Apr 16, 2009 6:24 am

arnvidr wrote:I don't have it really automated, but I have an alias that updates overlays and stuff after it syncs the tree, but I guess I could just change the order, or put eselect news list at the end of the operations. One question though, does the list of read news items get shortened once in a while? I'm really not interested in reading news from 2007 about a program I've never used.

As stated above, news items that aren't relevant for you (you use a greater version or you do not have the package installed at all) will not be displayed at all. The news facility is meant for really important news, so items there should only appear once in a while...shipping all those in a sync should be no burden at all.