[gentoo-dev] Unnecessary logs: has_version to the rescue?

[Sebastian Pipping]

Hello!


When browsing through emerge logs (using elogv) I often come across
stuff that doesn't affect me.  Two examples:

  x11-base/xorg-server-1.7.6 warns:
    You must rebuild all drivers if upgrading from xorg-server 1.6
    or earlier, because the ABI changed.

  dev-db/mysql-5.1.45-r1 logs:
    You might want to run: "emerge --config =dev-db/mysql-1.45-r1"
    if this is a new install.

I had xorg 1.7.x running before so that's pure noise in my case.
Same with mysql - I had it installed before.


So I am wondering:  Why aren't people using has_version to catch such
cases and omit things that we have seen before or that don't affect us?

  has_version -- "Returns 1 if the system has the requested
                  version of a certain package. For instance
                  has_version >=sys-libs/glibc-2.3.0."


Is it lazyness?  Is it unawareness?  Is there some kind of evilness in
this usage of has_version that I am not aware of?
Do we need a better framework for this?  If so what could it look like?


What do you think?



Sebastian