Re: [gentoo-user] portage getting mixed up with USE?

[Neil Bothwick]

On Thu, 23 Jun 2011 21:38:58 +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote:

> On Thursday 23 June 2011 08:59:53 Sebastian Beßler did opine thusly:

> > b) it breaks the way portage displays his informations. Without
> > autounmask the display of emerge shows what he is going to do. With
> > autounmask it shows what needs to be done.
>
> That is probably the most evil of all your reasons. There's an old dev
> joke about The Law Of Unintended Consequences, and it applies here -
> portage is now suddenly doing something new and 180 different from
> what it used to do. The normal response if "WTF?" followed by lots of
> indignation

Ah, the old "we do it that way because that's the way it's always been
done" argument. Yes, it is different, yes, it may be confusing when you
first encounter the change - but that doesn't make it bad.

> > c) it is a big change that came wihout any warning

Apart from the elog messages?

> > d) it is an automation, and because of that a red flag for any "real
> > gentoo user" :-D

What are you talking about? The default setting only displays the changes
that need to be made, there is no automation. You need to enable a
setting, one that only an idiot would enable without adding --ask too,
before anything is automatically written to a file.

> I agree, it's all bad.

Here's the change:

Old way: Portage complained about a flag or mask setting that needed to
be changed. You changed it and tried again. Portage complained about
another change it needed. Rinse and repeat until either all requirements
are satisfied or you give up in disgust.

New way: Portage gives you a list of all the changes that need to be made
and lets you either make them yourself or tells you about an option to
have it do it for you.

I thought even Gentoo users believed in letting the computer do all the
tedious works, otherwise they'd be running LFS.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

UNILINGUAL: American.