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On 26/04/2015 23:28, Philip Webb wrote: |
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> 150426 Michael Orlitzky wrote: |
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>> On 04/26/2015 03:17 PM, Philip Webb wrote: |
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>>> Portage needs to tell users (1) more clearly what's gone wrong, |
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>>> (2) what their choices are, (3) how to resolve the problem. |
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>> The process goes something like this: |
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>> 1. Become frustrated with the obtuse portage output. |
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>> 2. Get familiar with the portage source code. |
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>> 3. Develop an understanding of the dependency resolution process |
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>> and all of the possible conflicts that can arise. |
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>> 4. Come up with better ways to explain the error messages that are shown. |
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>> 5. Never get around to writing the patch, |
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>> because now you understand what Portage is telling you. |
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> |
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> That's far too much to expect of users : we're not dev's. |
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> |
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>> More seriously, once you start working on (3), you'll realize |
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>> that just because the error msgs suck doesn't mean you can make them better. |
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> |
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> If they "suck", they're not worth issuing, are they ? |
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> I'm not willing to become a dev, so I'll never know if I cd improve them, |
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> but it doesn't follow that no-one else could. |
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> |
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>> Maybe the best solution to a conflict is to buy a new video card for $5, |
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>> so that a newer version of nvidia-drivers will work, |
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>> so that the new version of xorg-server will work, |
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>> so that the new version of opengl will work, |
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>> so that you can upgrade tuxracer. |
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>> Portage can't figure out stuff like that. |
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> |
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> I'm not asking it to : citing extreme cases is a popular excuse for inaction. |
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> |
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>> If you're willing to wait an hour, it might be able to come up |
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>> with a list of ways you could resolve a conflict, but basically |
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>> all of them will be wrong, eg suggestion #1, uninstall everything. |
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> |
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> Really, this is a flippant response to a serious issue, |
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> which is being raised more often on the Gentoo User list. |
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> |
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>> All portage errors are essentially : |
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>> "you want something and you can't have it". |
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> |
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> Well, you said above that Portage doesn't know what the user wants (smile). |
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> |
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>> The solution is then to adjust slightly what it is that you asked for, |
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>> but Portage doesn't know what you really want |
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>> or what you're willing to settle for, |
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>> so the best it can do is give you the information you need |
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>> so that you can ask it a different question. |
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> |
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> Users need advice from Portage re the range + type of questions to ask. |
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> Portage needs to list possibilities + alternatives, ok a short list. |
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> At present, it spews out opaque lists of things it can't do |
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> & offers no assistance to users re what it mb able to do. |
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> |
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I'm with you on this Philip. By way of example, here's the output I get |
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every time I run emerge on my notebook: |
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========== |
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# emerge -avuND world |
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|
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These are the packages that would be merged, in order: |
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Calculating dependencies... done! |
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Total: 0 packages, Size of downloads: 0 KiB |
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WARNING: One or more updates/rebuilds have been skipped due to a |
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dependency conflict: |
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dev-lang/swig:0 |
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(dev-lang/swig-3.0.5:0/0::gentoo, ebuild scheduled for merge) |
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conflicts with |
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<dev-lang/swig-3.0.5 required by |
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(dev-python/m2crypto-0.22.3-r3:0/0::gentoo, installed) |
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^ ^^^^^ |
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dev-java/slf4j-api:0 |
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(dev-java/slf4j-api-1.7.7:0/0::gentoo, ebuild scheduled for merge) |
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conflicts with |
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<dev-java/slf4j-api-1.7.7:0 required by |
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(dev-java/jboss-logging-3.1.4:0/0::gentoo, installed) |
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^ ^^^^^ |
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Nothing to merge; quitting. |
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=========== |
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I know what this means, swig and slf4j-api are pinned (in the style of |
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Debian) because other packages that use them require |
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less-than-most-recent versions. Fair enough, that's a normal everyday |
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occurrence. Now try infer the truth from the stated output. |
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Note that I have no local masks that get involved, this output is from |
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the state of the tree itself. |
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This is the kind of query we are getting more and more often here on |
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-user; old nvidia versions is also somewhat common but we Gentooers have |
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always accepted that as part of the deal if we want to use ancient |
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hardware. My example above was never part of the deal as I read it. |
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-- |
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Alan McKinnon |
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alan.mckinnon@×××××.com |
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