[gentoo-portage-dev] Re: [PATCH] grabfile_package: support -* in profile "packages" files (bug 610670)

[Duncan]

Brian Dolbec posted on Thu, 23 Feb 2017 07:52:15 -0800 as excerpted:

> On Thu, 23 Feb 2017 11:53:15 +0000 Joakim Tjernlund
> <Joakim.Tjernlund@××××××××.com> wrote:
>
>> On Thu, 2017-02-23 at 02:52 -0800, Zac Medico wrote:
>> > Support -* in order to make it easier to create profiles for minimal
>> > systems (especially those built entirely from binary packages).
>>
>> Would be nice, but I don't get what the "packages" file is?
>
>
> That would be the 'packages' file (list of required packages)that are
> required for that specific profile.   This patch would allow to override
> that packages file  to build an image that only contained the minimum
> runtime pkgs required to perform the tasks it is suppose to. The idea
> being you would not need gcc, automake, ... or even portage or possibly
> python.  The built image could of course be considered more secure not
> having a compiler, etc... not to mention smaller.
>
>
> Zac, looks fine to me.

If my understanding is correct, that this lets me get rid of the whole 
list of specific system-package negations in
/etc/portage/profile/packages and replace it with a single -*, in ordered 
to eliminate @system entirely, I'm all for it! =:^)

(I've been running both USE="-* ..." and an entirely negated and thus 
empty @system set, relying entirely on my own activated USE flags and 
world_sets list for years now, and this will make it easier both because 
I won't have that whole @system list to negate individual package atom by 
individual package atom, and because I won't have to worry any longer 
about default @system set package atoms changing, thus nullifying my 
negation and adding them back into my @system set without my knowledge 
and forcing me to trace down what changed and renegate that package with 
the new atom, as happened not long ago.  Tho I'm not doing it to be 
particularly minimal, but rather, both to avoid @system's forced merge 
serialization, which at least used to break portage's parallelization 
features for a rather significant number of packages, and to be better 
informed and active in terms of what specific packages I do have on the 
system.)

I'll be looking forward to seeing this in a release. =:^)

-- 
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