foser wrote: [Sat Jun 11 2005, 04:15:22AM EDT] > Arch keywords are concepts and as such may not primarily be dealt as > a an alphabetical list but as words in a sentence, there is no abc > order in sentences.
Foser, no offense intended, but you started out in this thread making
a couple good points. However this is completely off the wall. The
KEYWORDS list isn't a sentence.
> If you have to search, you'll have
> to scan anyway, exact position is not a guarantee for certainty because
> not every pack is available on every arch, it's not like you can go
> without scanning.
Doesn't change the point that scanning in alpha order is easier than
scanning append order.
> Last, this only holds to some extent true for people
> in countries with alphabetic scripts, outside that limited part of the
> globe people are not as proficient in ordering alphabetically.
AFAIK, all Gentoo developers are fluent English speakers, even if for
some it isn't their first language.
> A certain amount of uncertainty in order actually might prove to be
> effective in having everyone who deals with keywords actually really
> check all keywords and not depend on assumptions, which both 'error'
> cases you mention seem to be caused by.
Maintaining a behavior that encourages mistakes, in hopes that the
extra effort required will prevent those mistakes? This cannot
possibly be a good approach...
IMHO the discussion in this thread has brought at least two things to
light, though I'm still open to rebuttal of course:
1. Potentially controversial tool changes that affect a large
number of developers should be discussed on -dev before
deployment. This is something I intend to do in the future.
2. In the case at hand, most developers prefer alpha order, and
there is not good reason for reverting the ekeyword change.
I still don't have the right to make this decision
unilaterally, though, so if foser or anybody else wants to take
this before the managers and request a vote, that is cool.
Regards,
Aron
--
Aron Griffis
Gentoo Linux Developer
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