Re: [gentoo-user] libav and ffmpeg on the same computer issue once again

[Neil Bothwick]

On Sat, 16 May 2015 08:57:15 -0400, Rich Freeman wrote:

> > Does that include the several lines of comments, often repeated, that
> > portage includes in the auto-unmask output? I just checked two systems
> > for abi_x86_32 and got around 130 lines in one and 220 in the other.
>
> Yes, it does.  The number of actual configuration lines is much
> smaller of course - probably 1/5th of the total.
>
> My point wasn't so much that this was an inordinate number of 32-bit
> packages, given my list of installed packages.  It was more about the
> fact that on a system that I'm trying to keep fairly minimal other
> than my explicit preferences I end up with a huge config file that
> tends to mix my preferences with a lot of stuff that exists solely to
> satisfy the depgraph.  It would be like sticking every package I
> install in my world set.

Oh, I agree. If portage needs this stuff set, it should keep it separate
from my choices, somewhere like /var/lib/portage/package.use.

> There are some ways around this which I'll probably get around to on a
> rainy day:
>
> 1.  Take better advantage of the fact that package.use can be a
> directory and have several files.  The 32-bit flags would go in their
> own file.

Yes, that's how I do it. I usually group entries according to the program
that I use, so a flag for a dependency goes in with the settings for the
program requiring that dependency. That way, if I remove the program I
can simply remove the single file for package.use. For the abi_x86 flags,
though, I keep them in their own file, so those settings are not mixed in
with my settings, although they really shouldn't be in the same directory.

> Autounmask goes in a separate file with a z at the start of
> the name and the intent is that lines in this file get moved to the
> appropriate files.

That one through me for a while, until I bothered to RTFM, portage always
adds auto-unmasked entries to the last file in the directory.

> 2.  What I'd really like to get to is a point where all my systems are
> defined by ansible configs or the like.  I've already started
> container-izing many of my services to cut down on interactions - this
> way when I do random package updates I'm not dealing with mysql
> breaking or apache or whatever.  However, this increases the amount of
> updating I have to do, and I'd like to bring that back down using a
> tool like ansible.

That sounds an interesting approach.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

I used to have a handle on life, then it broke.