Re: [gentoo-dev] Release/Stable/Dev

[Chad Huneycutt]

Riyad Kalla wrote:
> How do I combat this? Say if I'm interested in a rock-solid snapshot
> of Gentoo without going through an ungodly amount of administrative
> setup and mirroring of the snapshot etc.? I realize that rock-solid
> is relative sometimes, but I'm more asking along the lines of say gcc
> gets update from 3.2 to 3.4 (hypothetically), and everyone knows that
> 3.2 is more stable, and there are some growing pains going on with
> 3.4, BUT 3.4 is the current ebuild... That sort of deal, so when I
> install gentoo on a new work station, I want to keep the versions of
> Gentoo static across all machines, or atleast in synch with
> eachother.

Use profiles for this.  The process would go something like this:

1. Install Gentoo on your dev box
2. Tweak until the stability is where you want it (i.e., find stable 
versions of software, make patches -- and submit them to bugzilla, and 
place any outside ebuilds in /usr/local/portage or whatever and set 
PORTAGE_OVERLAY -- or whatever the var is)
3. Once you have the packages from portage like you want them, create a 
new profile:
# cd /usr/portage/profiles
# cp -r your_current_profile my_stable_profile
# mv my_stable_profile /usr/local/portage/profiles
# rm /etc/make.profile
# ln -s /usr/local/portage/profiles/my_stable_profile /etc/make.profile
# cd /usr/local/portage/profiles/my_stable_profile
# echo "all_my_package-revisions" > packages

The packages file is well commented, but basically you can use it to 
"pin" the versions of all your packages (or just the ones that matter).
4. Now you should be able to use that profile directory as 
/etc/make.profile on all your systems.

That is a rough sketch of one way to do it that is probably the most 
"Gentoo-recommended."  Another way to go about it would be to pin 
versions in the /var/cache/edb/world. I don't actually know how to do 
that, though.

-- 
Chad Huneycutt
chadh@g.o


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