[gentoo-dev] Re: Masking practics

[Duncan]

Enrico Weigelt <weigelt@×××××.de> posted
20060803160326.GC19696@××××××.local, excerpted below, on  Thu, 03 Aug 2006
18:03:26 +0200:

> * Duncan <1i5t5.duncan@×××.net> schrieb:
>
> <snip>
>
>> Just to add... 30 days is the usual package mask.  As AW states,
>> the idea of the mask is so users will have time after masking to
>> save the masked ebuild to their overlay and/or file a bug saying
>
> but then it may be too late.
> I just did a test, moved by package.mask away and called
> emerge --pretend --update world .
> It would downgrade lots of packages, ie. bugzilla to an older version
> not yet supporting postgresql and so immediately make many services
> (ie. all my bugzilla installations) unusable.
>
> Re-masking must be handled very carefully. At least portage has to
> know how some package was masked at installation time and shout out
> an big-fat warning, if an mask was added later.

How can it be too late?  You sync during that 30 days it's masked, do an
emerge --pretend --update world, and see that it's going to downgrade. 
You check and the package is still there, so it's obviously a package.mask
thing.  You check package.mask and sure enough, there's a note in there
saying that it's being removed.  You decide you want to keep it, and move
the still intact ebuild to your overlay and add an appropriate entry to
your package.unmask.

As others have pointed out, even if it's not in the tree any more, it's in
/var/db/pkg.  Even if for some reason insanity strikes and you don't do an
emerge --pretend before you do the real emerge --update, and it's gone out
of both the tree and /var/db/pkg, if you are running FEATURES=buildpkg (a
/great/ way to avoid remerging, and have customized binary backups
available to reinstall if necessary), you can get it from there (the
ebuild is tacked onto the end of the tarball, thus the warning about
additional data after the end of the tarball if you open it using tar or
whatever, I've rescued or compared install ebuilds to current tree ebuilds
from there a couple times).  Even if all local copies, including backups,
are wiped, the ebuilds and related files are in the viewCVS attic, as long
as the raw sources are still available somewhere.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

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