Gentoo Archives: gentoo-user

From: Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@×××××.com>
To: gentoo-user@l.g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] Problem with revdep-rebuild
Date: Mon, 16 Aug 2010 10:00:57
Message-Id: 201008161157.14890.alan.mckinnon@gmail.com
In Reply to: Re: [gentoo-user] Problem with revdep-rebuild by Dale
1 On Monday 16 August 2010 11:38:17 Dale wrote:
2 > Peter Humphrey wrote:
3 > > On Monday 16 August 2010 09:13:29 Dale wrote:
4 > >> Massimiliano Ziccardi wrote:
5 > >>> # equery belongs /usr/lib/libxfce4util.la<http://libxfce4util.la>
6 > >>> [ Searching for file(s) /usr/lib/libxfce4util.la
7 > >>> <http://libxfce4util.la> in *... ]
8 > >>> #
9 > >>> "
10 > >>
11 > >> Equery doesn't give any results because it is not installed.
12 > >
13 > > If it weren't installed it wouldn't be able to announce what it was
14 > > searching for and where :-)
15 >
16 > Some new people think it knows where things come from even if it is not
17 > installed. It can't do that so I posted that in case the person didn't
18 > know. Then I posted a way to find out even if a package is not
19 > installed. I didn't know about that website until someone pointed it
20 > out to me many ages ago.
21 >
22 > It would be neat if it could do that tho. Just have no idea how it
23 > could. ;-)
24
25 It would have to consult a database of file->package mappings. For already
26 installed packages, it simply looks in /var/ locally - an excellent high-
27 quality database of such already exists there :-)
28
29 For not already installed packages, it would have to look out on the
30 intartubes for the site you mentioned or something similar. A portage dev
31 would have to be batshit insane to even try that as the results are "fuzzy".
32 There are filename collisions to deal with, plus the fact that you don't know
33 what a package installs till someone builds it. And then there's the carnage
34 caused by USE flags - my list of installed files for a package is likely
35 different to yours.
36
37 A hallmark of portage is that it deals in definitive data - results are always
38 exact, unambiguous and deterministic - especially deterministic.
39
40 Google for instance, is none of these things. Google results are "good
41 enough". Mixing portage's view of data with google's view of data will break
42 portage is many many horrible ways and make your life (as someone who helps
43 others on this list) miserable - users *will* trust such a lookup tool to be
44 definitive.
45
46 Which all goes to say you should resist the creation of any such lookup tool
47 with every fibre of your being :-)
48
49
50 --
51 alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

Replies

Subject Author
Re: [gentoo-user] Problem with revdep-rebuild Bill Longman <bill.longman@×××××.com>