[gentoo-user] emerge -1 `eix -Iu --only-names` & removing old version of Python

[Stroller]

Hi there,

I recently got bitten by the libexpat.so.0 error - for me I  
discovered this some considerable months after everyone else on the  
list, not because I don't update often (perhaps once or twice every  
few weeks) but, I think, because my machines are servers and I don't  
have that many packages installed.

During the LONG process of resolving this I discovered the command  
`eix -Iu` and that running this with the --only-names flag would give  
me a text list of all the files on the system which aren't at the  
latest version.

First question: is 'emerge -1 `eix -Iu --only-names`' a useful  
command for updating packages not in the world file? Or is this usage  
of mine to be avoided? It just seems more effective than `emerge -D  
world` - that seems to miss many packages.

I am aware that the above command may update packages I don't  
actually need on the system, however it is less arduous to remove  
(`emerge -C`) those afterwards, having checked what depends upon them  
& stuff. I would rather have some unneeded packages on my system than  
some obsolete ones which will cause problems in the future.


So today I ran 'emerge -1 `eix -Iu --only-names`' in order to test  
the "new" elog -> email functionality - I had read mention of this in  
the past, but  the discussion of it in the "idea on updates" thread  
made me think to try it. BTW: there is no /usr/share/portage/config/ 
make.conf.example on my system - it is at /etc/make.conf.example  
instead. Is this a problem?


Anyway, I was reminded today that a side-effect of this command is  
that it (re)emerges the latest version of any package for which there  
is also an older slotted-version on the system. So it here it keeps  
updating Python.

$ eix -I python$
[U] dev-lang/python
      Available versions:
         (2.4)   2.4.4-r5 2.4.4-r6 2.4.4-r14
         (2.5)   2.5.2-r6 ~2.5.2-r7
         {+cxx +threads berkdb bootstrap build doc elibc_uclibc  
examples gdbm ipv6 ncurses nocxx nothreads readline sqlite ssl tk  
ucs2 wininst}
      Installed versions:  2.4.4-r9(2.4)(20:32:42 05/04/08)(berkdb  
examples gdbm ncurses readline ssl -bootstrap -build -doc - 
elibc_uclibc -ipv6 -nocxx -nothreads -tk -ucs2)
                           2.5.2-r6(2.5)(03:46:36 08/30/08)(berkdb  
doc examples gdbm ncurses readline ssl threads -bootstrap -build - 
elibc_uclibc -ipv6 -sqlite -tk -ucs2 -wininst)
      Homepage:            http://www.python.org/
      Description:         Python is an interpreted, interactive,  
object-oriented programming language.

$ sudo python-updater
Password:
  * Starting Python Updater from 2.4 to 2.5 :
  * No packages needs to be remerged.
$

So second question is, can python-2.4.4-r9 be safely removed from the  
system?

I don't tend to keep up with best practices in Gentoo, so any  
criticism or advice would be much appreciated.

Stroller.