RE: [gentoo-dev] making %95 of users happy

[Todd Wright]

> > > And to the person (Andrew I think) who quoted the following
> from the gentoo site as a reason for not having release branches...
> > >
> > > "*Portage allows you to set up Gentoo Linux the way you like it*..."
> > >
> > > It doesnt. Just when I get it how I like it, it changes.
>
> "IT changes"??  I'm at a loss here.  You mean that YOU keep telling it
> to change?  <wink>  I think that you missed Daniel Robbins point:

No, I think you and the other person who suggested "dont emerge --update world" missed mine.

The problem is not emerge, or in using "--update" or "world", rather it is in the fact that the portage tree keeps being updated constantly, and there is no mechanism to lock things down, that allows for this.

For example. I do an emerge rsync and then emerge package-a, but package-a is broken, so later I emerge rsync again, hoping a new package-a-r1 is available, it is, and it works, but requires lib-x at version 1.0, which I have so it compiles all nice and everyone s happy

So, package-a is done.

Now I need to fix package-b which is also broken, the latest rsync I just did for package-a also got me a new package-b-r5.ebuild

package-b requires lib-x at version 1.35, but I have 1.0 so it has lib-x-1.35 as a dependancy. The lib downloads and installs, but it overwrites lib-x-1.0. Now package-a is broken again and wont compile, so I wait. a new rsync gets me package-a-r2 which compiles with lib-x-1.35, and all is happy.

A week from now, I emerge rsync to see if there are any new package-c updates and a new ebuild for lib-x-1.80 arrives but I dont install it since the other packages wont compile with it. Thats fine, but if I ever decide to rebuild my system from scratch (I might change motherboards and require new optimisation) with emerge --emptytree world, (which doesnt work btw - see bug 1911) portage goes and compiles lib-x-1.80 and Im back to square one.

The problem is not in compiling the world and being bleeding edge, it is in the fact that the portage tree is a constantly moving target. Every time you rsync to get a new version of one package you get the new version of _ALL_ packages.

What I have been saying all along is there needs to be a way to lock the system at a particular level - whether it is locked by the developers or by me, to say "this set of packages work reasonably well togehter".  This doesnt have to be guaranteed, but you should be able to say "I have a reasonably stable system, lets keep it at this level", but still emerge rsync to get ebuilds for vital security fixes etc which apply to the packages that you have installed already, but nothing else.

Personally, being familiar with Linux, I can live with portage the way it is, but as a technologist I can see what others are saying, and agree with them. Im just trying to explain it the best I can.

Perhaps this will work itself out all by itself.   When Gentoo 1.2 is released and the make.profile is changed to point at the default-1.2 profile, the bleeding edgers can use that while the more conservative keep their link to 1.0  Thinking about it, this is probably the ultimate solution, its just not apparent right now since Gentoo is so young, and the only available option is to use the 1.0 profile. When there is a choice, the current version profile will be bleeding edge, while the previous version will only be updated with major fixes, and will become the "stable" release.

There. Ive just convinced myself. This is a temporary problem that solves itself as Gentoo matures.

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