Gentoo Archives: gentoo-dev

From: "Mateusz A. Mierzwin'ski" <mateuszmierzwinski@××.pl>
To: gentoo-dev@l.g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-dev] What are blocks used for?
Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2008 05:45:48
Message-Id: 480594A8.80105@o2.pl
In Reply to: [gentoo-dev] What are blocks used for? by Ciaran McCreesh
1 Ciaran McCreesh pisze:
2 > What all are blocks used for?
3 >
4 > a) Marking that two unrelated packages are mutually incompatible at
5 > runtime because they happen to collide, for example on a commonly named
6 > executable.
7 >
8 > b) Marking that two related implementations are mutually incompatible at
9 > runtime because they both provide the same binary.
10 >
11 > c) Marking that a file that used to be provided by one package is now
12 > provided by another package that is either depending upon or depended
13 > upon by the original package.
14 >
15 > d) Marking that a package has been moved into another package.
16 >
17 > Are there any other uses?
18 >
19 > For future EAPIs, being able to tell the package manager that your
20 > block is of one of the types above will help the package manager smooth
21 > out the upgrade path for users.
22 Yes, but You should be able to get upgrade without crashing Your system.
23 > For example, for class d) blocks such
24 > as the recent coreutils / mktemp mess, the package manager can suggest
25 > to the user to install the new package and then uninstall the old
26 > package, rather than forcing the user to uninstall the old package by
27 > hand (possibly leaving their system without critical utilities) and then
28 > install the new package.
29 >
30 It's good Idea until we get binary using different libs. When binaries
31 are rewritten to use new libs and this makes them placed in other
32 packages then emerge (as installing mechanism) _SOULD_NOT_ install that
33 package until user decide what should do. Just as it is now. People are
34 designed to use brain so uninstall package is no problem. This is also
35 in some part warning to try revdep-rebuild because some dependencies
36 could be changed. Revdep-rebuild allso should be running by emerge?
37 > I strongly suspect that in many (but not all) cases the package manager
38 > could be making users' lives a lot easier than it currently is...
39 >
40 >
41 And I strongly suggest to leave old mechanism of portage, because we saw
42 couple times what _GREAT_ automatic makes with distro - eg. Mandriva
43 with all creators and cheap installer - couple apps not running, low
44 performance.
45
46 Don't get me wrong - I also have that problems, and they make me
47 nervous, but when I think what could I done by automatic replace package
48 or binary then I get to thinking that everything is ok...
49 --
50 gentoo-dev@l.g.o mailing list

Replies

Subject Author
Re: [gentoo-dev] What are blocks used for? Ciaran McCreesh <ciaran.mccreesh@××××××××××.com>
Re: [gentoo-dev] What are blocks used for? Richard Freeman <rich0@g.o>