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On Wednesday 25 March 2009 12:38:53 David wrote: |
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> I wrote an entry in my blog about gentoo, and created a little script to |
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> make gentoo handling a bit easier, and whant to share it will all gentoo |
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> users to see if it could help them to understand gentoo better (specially |
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> for noob ones), and simplify its handling. |
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> |
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> I think it is not spam, since it could help others (I hope so). |
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> |
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> The link: http://stormbyte.blogspot.com/2009/03/gentoo-easy-handling.html |
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> |
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> David. |
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It's far too simplistic. It doesn't take account of dependencies that must |
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also be masked/unmasked/whatever and will cause obscure error messages that |
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will confuse the user more than simply using portage. |
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A noob user will realistically expect that if he gives "kde" as a parameter to |
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your script, then all of kde will immediately be installable. This will |
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actually not happen though, he will have to read up on dependencies and more, |
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and unmask those too. By which time he is in a position to not need your |
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script anymore. |
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So, as a teaching aid to get people to understand why they must use portage as |
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designed, it works well. As a script for actual use, it falls short. |
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You also don't account for the case of /etc/portage/package.mask/<file_name> |
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To fix that the user will have to read man 5 portage or read the Gentoo docs, |
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in which case your script again becomes redundant. |
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-- |
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alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com |
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