Re: [gentoo-user] dev-python/isodate breaks my emerge because it's at EAPI?

[n952162]

On 8/6/21 2:16 PM, Rich Freeman wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 3, 2021 at 2:03 AM n952162 <n952162@×××.de> wrote:
>> Well, what you say is likely true, but does "old software" really need
>> to be kept working?  Couldn't problems necessarily  only be dealt with
>> in the newest versions?
>>
> I think you are misunderstanding what actually went wrong in your
> situation.  Nothing broke in your existing software.
>
> You're using an old version of portage.  It will continue to work as
> it always has.
>
> However, you wanted to use it with a newer version of the software
> repository.  This contained a package that wasn't compatible with old
> versions of portage.  The version of portage you're using detected
> this, and refused to install it, so as to not randomly break your
> system.  Your system continued to work as it always had.  You just
> couldn't install that particular package, or anything that depends on
> it.


I think that doesn't characterize my point quite.

I was complaining, mostly, that isodate had to be the thing that was
incompatible with my configuration.  Maybe there is a unavoidable reason
that that package had to move to the newest EAPI, or maybe it was just a
sense that it's cool to be with the cutting edge.  It seems to me that
isodate (which is actually tied, perhaps indirectly, to clearly slow
United Nations rule-making) must be pretty stable.


>
> Generally we try to maintain a reasonably sane upgrade path going back
> maybe six months or so.  You just needed to update portage first.


My update was two months late.


>
> If your system is more than a month or two out of date just running
> emerge -uD world or whatever blindly is more likely to run into a
> problem.  It shouldn't break your system unless you go adding random
> options to the command line to override safety features,


I don't have the expertise to do something like that.



> but it might
> involve a few steps (like updating portage, @system, and so on before
> trying to update everything).

>
> It usually isn't unmanageable, but Gentoo is definitely not an
> LTS-oriented distro.  If you want to only get security fixes for three
> years and then update everything in one go, then stick with something
> like RHEL, Ubuntu LTS, or debian stable.  Those distros deliver
> exactly that sort of experience, and really there isn't as much
> benefit to something like Gentoo if you're just going to update it
> every other year anyway.


Those distros are not source distros.  I'm making an argument that
there's a large space between binary distributions and source
distributions that pass every upstream change down in realtime. Gentoo
is in the best position to service that space



>