[gentoo-user] eclean and the --time-limit option

[Francesco Turco]

Hello.

I usually use the following commands to clean distfiles and binary
packages after an upgrade:

# eclean --destructive distfiles
# eclean --destructive packages

Now I'd like to add the --time-limit=1w option, in order to prevent
recent files to be deleted. I think this would be useful for having time
to properly test the system and rapidly reverting any problematic
update. Or when you remove a program but you change idea some days later
and you want it back.

In man eclean it says:
> don't delete files modified since <time>

So eclean looks for modification time. In /usr/portage/packages files
were last modified when they were last emerged. So this is OK. But in
/usr/portage/distfiles files last modification time does not correspond
to when they were last downloaded. So it could happen that you
downloaded package X today, tried it, didn't like it, unmerged it, but
since its sources may have a modification time more than 1 week ago it
could be deleted by eclean. I have distfiles whose modification time is
years in the past, although my system is just some days old.

I wonder if there's some way to fix this, perhaps by telling Portage to
update modification time for distfiles when they are fetched from
servers. Or using some other option with eclean.

Thank you.