[gentoo-dev] Re: Re: Re: Masking practics

[Duncan]

Enrico Weigelt <weigelt@×××××.de> posted
20060807130156.GE25236@××××××.local, excerpted below, on  Mon, 07 Aug 2006
15:01:57 +0200:

> My problem still seems unsolved (or did I miss something) ?

You missed something.

> Lets say, if I've, installed foo-1.1, and it gets masked due some bug(s),
> but 1.0 isn't, I want to get informed with an big fat warning, *before*
> anything actually done, ie.
>
> [...]
> # WARNING: installed package foo-1.1 has been masked and would # be
> downgraded:
> # <masking comment ...>
> [...]

That's precisely what emerge --pretend --verbose covers.  Or, if you want
the display with a question to continue or not, use --ask instead of
--verbose.

A good Gentoo user (read that as a good system administrator, because
that's exactly what a Gentoo distribution user is in this context) will
never run a straight "fully automatic" upgrade/downgrade, without knowing
exactly what's going to be done, because that's foolhardy, as you
correctly point out.  They will always know what to expect, because they
will have either used --pretend first, or will use --ask as a matter of
course.

Are you actually suggesting that you run emerge --update /blind/,
/without/ having viewed the --pretend (or --ask) output to see what it's
going to actually do, first?  No /wonder/ you are having problems if so! 
That's why the --pretend and --ask switches are /there/!  Use them for
what they are intended for, and you'll no longer be troubled by downgrades
without warning.  Only /after/ you are comfortable that the command will
do what you expect/want, do you run it without the --pretend, or say yes to
the --ask.

-- 
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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