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On Sun, 02 Jan 2011 19:24:14 +0000 |
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Roy Bamford <neddyseagoon@g.o> wrote: |
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> Some other interesting things along the way:- |
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> You need to incrementally update gcc and glibc as there is some |
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> mutual blockage there too. |
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> libpng-1.2, xorg and libexpat too if the box is old enough. How far |
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> do you want to go back? |
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> |
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> Its a very educational experience but a reinstall is faster. |
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> The real killer is that some core system packages need EAPI>0 to |
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> build. |
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> |
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> Personally, I don't regard tinderbox as any part of any officially |
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> supported upgrade path. |
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|
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Up until the present EAPI era, we've supported upgrading from very |
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ancient systems. We've never required users to completely reinstall. |
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Check our upgrade doc: |
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|
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http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/gentoo-upgrading.xml |
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|
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There's a constant stream of help requests on the forums and IRC from |
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folks upgrading from years-old installations. Usually it's from fokls |
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who've been given some never-updated, faithfully running Gentoo |
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server, sometimes from the pre-2004.X days. Our upgrade instructions |
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work to a point, and then Portage/python and other system packages |
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stop working, thanks to the differing EAPI versions. And *then*, as |
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Roy mentioned, there's the whole separate |
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rebuild-expat-and-similar-libs sequence of failures. |
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|
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These are the kinds of things for which there's no canonical, |
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official upgrade path. It's entirely trial-by-error, which sucks for |
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end users who were expecting to follow our upgrade guide as-is, but |
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then the EAPI shifts bit 'em in the butt. Users should not be told |
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"just reinstall," since often that's not an option. |
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|
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Whatever you folks eventually settle on, please send patches and |
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suggestions to the GDP for our upgrade guide. I'd prefer that users |
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have a possible upgrade path from *any* profile/version of Gentoo up |
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through the present. If you decide not to support anything older than |
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version X and require reinstalling or some other set of procedures, |
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please let the GDP know via our ML or bugzilla. |
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