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

[n952162]

On 8/6/21 2:37 PM, n952162 wrote:
> 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 However, you wanted to use it with a newer version of the software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 If your system is more than a month or two out of date just running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
>
>
>

I see that that begs the question of why someone would be interested in
a source distribution.

With a binary distribution, you fly on trust.  With a source
distribution, you do, too, given the size of the code base.

The difference is, with a source distribution, there's a "paper trail"
that can be followed back if that trust was abused.

That's just about impossible with a binary distro.