Re: [gentoo-user] emerge @system

[Peter Humphrey]

On Tuesday 30 Aug 2016 00:07:53 Alan McKinnon wrote:

> Don't forget that @system only lives in a context, and the context is a
> real computer.
>
> Out of context it's just a list of strings. In context, it's strings
> that means packages, with deps and everything else that needs to be
> built for @system to mean anything on the machine it's added to.
>
> One never needs to define @system, that is already done in a profile so
> it's not something that means sense to migrate or re-use elsewhere.
> Don't worry about @system, worry about USE and get that right. Emerge
> will deal with what it takes to give the user the @system he's really
> asking for.
>
> Or maybe I don't completely understand yet Peter's actual question.

Hmm. I do seem to have a knack of not saying quite what I mean these days.

I want to define a minimal set to make sure the tool chain is correct and 
free of faults, not just up to date, before doing anything else. Then I can 
use that to build whatever other parts of the system I may be suspicious of. 
I know that portage will work out a good order of battle, but it assumes 
correctness in the tool chain: its job is to keep the system current. If 
there is a problem in the tools, it's going to cause problems when the rest 
of the system is built.

Quite a while ago I came across some advice to emerge gcc first, then glibc 
and libtool, then whatever else is needed (@system, @world etc). I've been 
doing that, but it does seem a bit minimal. That's why I thought of this 
sysbase idea.

You may wonder why I suspect my system at all. The reason is an intermittent 
series of apparently unrelated things going wrong. This box is only six 
months old and it contains some very recent hardware, and I'm not quite 
convinced that I have everything set up just right.

-- 
Rgds
Peter