Gentoo Archives: gentoo-dev

From: Dale <rdalek1967@×××××.com>
To: gentoo-dev@l.g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-dev] Packages pulling in python-3*, also they dont require it
Date: Fri, 19 Mar 2010 15:03:11
Message-Id: 4BA39214.8090003@gmail.com
In Reply to: Re: [gentoo-dev] Packages pulling in python-3*, also they dont require it by Alistair Bush
1 Alistair Bush wrote:
2 >> Zac Medico wrote:
3 >>
4 >> I think what most people want is for portage not to pull in a package
5 >> that nothing uses. I'm not a dev nor a programmer but I have yet to see
6 >> any good reason for installing something that is not being used. It's
7 >> not being tested to see if it is stable. It would have to be used
8 >> before that would happen. Basically, it is just one more package to
9 >> update and taking up hard drive space. It's not doing anything else.
10 >>
11 >> As for slots, if something needs it, portage would pull in the new
12 >> slot. That's what portage does. It just seems in this case it is
13 >> pulling in a new slot that nothing uses.
14 >>
15 > Have you considered that they might possibly be hundreds of packages that you
16 > have installed providing functionality that you never use, but are only there
17 > as a fixed dependencies of something that you do.
18 >
19 > Hell lets take it even further than that, i'm sure there are thousands of
20 > lines of code in most packages that you will never hit, so why dont we start
21 > "masking" them as well.
22 >
23 > I don't recall ever using grep --version, please remove (mask) that code from
24 > grep. We will obviously need someway to unmask those code masks so lets
25 > create a couple of files for portage. Hows....
26 >
27 > code.mask and code.unmask with a format of....
28 >
29 > package path/to/file line1 line2 line3 line4
30 >
31 >
32 >
33 > Or maybe we could just let users who don't want to install python-3 mask it
34 > _locally_. Once they need it portage is more than capable of telling them
35 > that.
36 >
37 >
38 >> Dale
39 >>
40 >> :-) :-)
41
42 Because in my opinion, portage is the first thing in line to keep a
43 system sane. Installing packages that are not needed means that portage
44 fails on that. So in your example, portage fails to do its due
45 diligence and it falls to the users to do it for portage. Yep, sounds
46 like a good idea.
47
48 If a package has something that I don't need, I can generally disable
49 that with the USE flags. That is why I picked Gentoo as my distro. I
50 can disable/remove things that I don't need. If Gentoo is going to
51 start putting a lot of unneeded stuff on my system, I may as well go
52 back to Mandriva and off the RPM cliff. I left Mandrake to get rid of
53 unneeded packages. Now Gentoo is doing the same just not nearly as
54 bad. This would be like a small bump in the huge hill that Mandriva has.
55
56 Dale
57
58 :-) :-)

Replies

Subject Author
Re: [gentoo-dev] Packages pulling in python-3*, also they dont require it Doktor Notor <notordoktor@×××××.com>