Re: [gentoo-user] emerge --update behavior

[Michael Orlitzky]

On 01/02/2012 06:29 PM, Alan McKinnon wrote:
> On Mon, 02 Jan 2012 18:11:15 -0500
> Michael Orlitzky<michael@××××××××.com>  wrote:
>
>> If I know that I have been careful in the past, this is not a
>> problem, since the contents of world will be accurate. However, I'm a
>> little worried that I may have forgotten --oneshot and added
>> PEAR-Mail by mistake on an upgrade. Now, I have to either risk
>> breaking some customer's site, or leave PEAR-Mail in my world file
>> forever.
>
> TwoIf I know that I have been careful in the past, this is not a
> problem, since the contents of world will be accurate. However, I'm a
> little worried that I may have forgotten --oneshot and added PEAR-Mail
> by mistake on an upgrade. Now, I have to either risk breaking some
> customer's site, or leave PEAR-Mail in my world file forever. questions:
>
> 1. How do you propose any possible software could help with this?

Well, before the change to --update, I kept all of my world files clean 
for years. The problem still would have existed if I had screwed up, but 
it was much harder to screw up.

Software can't help at this point. That is, ultimately, my reason for 
preferring the old behavior. Just the knowledge that it is easy to 
accidentally add a package to world makes it dangerous to clean up 
manually. I think, "Maybe I added this accidentally, since it's so easy 
to forget --oneshot. Better leave it alone."


> 2. Why do you care about those specific packages in world? Do they
> cause a conflict or some other large problem? Personally I'd just leave
> them in world

That's the plan.

Most of these servers have been running forever. I've never reformatted 
a gentoo box. If every once in a while a package gets added to world, 
it's not a problem today or tomorrow, but it might be in ten years if 
these boxes are still up -- and I expect some of them to be.