Re: [gentoo-dev] Question about ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~x86"

Quoting Chad Huneycutt <chadh@g.o>:

> I would say that is a bad idea.  While a good number of the ~x86 ebuilds
> are revision bumps that have not been sufficiently tested, you will find
> some that won't compile (although it is my opinion that those should be
> in package.mask), and it would make the installation a real headache if
> you have to worry about emerge failing every couple of packages.

I have a complete system running on a ~x86 basis, but yes, it wasn't possible to
install from scratch with ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~x86" ... if I recall correctly
glibc, or perhaps it was gcc itself, required a c++ compiler to install, which
isn't present in the bootstrap stage-1 tarball.  The build failed.

How I was able to get it to work was to install a normal system, set
ACCEPT_KEYWORDS, then do an emerge -e word.  This didn't get all the way
through, but it did get gcc and glibc upgraded and most things compiled against
them.  I went ahead and recompiled xfree, kde, gnome, mozilla, and open office
by hand against the new libraries.

The system is *fairly* stable, though nowhere near as solid as a normal x86 system.

> I recommend just using x86 packages, and then manually upgrading to ~x86
> packages if you need it.

This will certainly get you a more stable system.  I tend to just edit the ~ out
of the ebuilds for those I want to use on a stable system and avoid using the
ACCEPT_KEYWORDS entry, as it pulls in serious things like gcc and glibc, but
hopefully three things will happen that will make using ACCEPT_KEYWORDS more
practical:

1) all broken ( = won't compile ) ebuilds in package.mask
2) all non-broken ( will compile and not damange system) ebuilds out of package.mask
3) deeply "core" stuff whose upgrade will break things (gcc, glibc might be it,
maybe getty?) wouldn't be unmasked simply by accepting "~", as that is more akin
to a complete system upgrade, not simply access to cutting edge apps.

That last point is arguably the weakest, but when ACCEPT_KEYWORDS pulls in a new
version of gcc and glibc, it makes the rest of the system very fragile.  It
would be nice to have a layer of protection against that (and have to do
something a little more proactive to pull in a new gcc or glibc), so that one
could play around with the latest xfree and transcode without fscking the whole
system.

Jean.

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