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Hund wrote: |
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>> My biggest problem with Gentoo was not so much the time needed to |
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>> compile huge ebuilds like Firefox, Thunderbird, or Chromium, but that |
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>> say if you neglected doing updates for a while and then decided to start |
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>> again, then you'd have serious problems. This is because, at least the |
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>> way I understood it, after some time old ebuilds would get deleted from |
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>> the Portage servers to conserve space there, but some of those now |
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>> deleted ebuilds would still be needed as dependencies to do iterative |
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>> updates. The sure-way to resolve this problem would be to re-emerge the |
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>> whole @world set, which of course would take way-longer than just |
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>> Firefox, and might work differently because the '/etc/' configuration |
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>> schema might have changed. |
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>> |
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>> In my case I had some weird problem either emerging some ebuild or |
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>> keeping an old version of an ebuild to keep the functionality or the |
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>> '/etc/' schema removed in the new versions. I just let things sit, and |
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>> moved on to other projects. But when later on I tried to go back to the |
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>> original issue, I had even more trouble because now I was even further |
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>> behind @world, and more ebuilds would not upgrade because of deleted |
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>> dependencies. |
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>> |
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>> So to sum it up, my problem with Gentoo was that you could not just do |
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>> iterative updates after long periods of inactivity. You pretty much had |
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>> to emerge daily and if you had some problem then drop everything and fix |
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>> it right away, or else you'll fall even further behind and eventually |
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>> might have to rebuild @world. And so because constant attention |
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>> intervention and trial and error was required you could not just compile |
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>> huge ebuilds overnight and go about your life during the day. |
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> It's funny how different two people can perceive the same thing. |
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> |
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> One of the very reason I like Gentoo is the fact that I *don't* have to do daily, or even weekly updates. I'm rather busy with life right now and I just love how little love Gentoo requires to work, and how reliable it is. I have never had any issues with postponing updates for longer periods of time. |
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> |
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> -- |
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> Hund |
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> |
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> |
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|
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|
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Depending on what you consider a longer period of time, you may have |
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just been lucky. There's been a couple threads in the past year or so |
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where people didn't update for a while and had to jump through hoops to |
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get their system updated. I think one just did a reinstall because it |
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was faster and easier. Another did the upgrade just as a learning |
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experience. I seem to recall that a reinstall would have been faster. |
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I'm not sure what was learned tho. |
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|
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In the past, others have had this same problem. It is recommended by |
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long term users not to go longer than 3 or 4 months for a pretty easy |
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upgrade path in most cases. Sometimes depending on changes, that can |
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stretch to 6 months. That said, during some major changes, even going a |
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couple months can cause some serious bumps in the upgrade path. It may |
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be doable but certainly more difficult. |
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|
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Gentoo supports updates up to a year old. Thing is, that means Gentoo |
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and the package manager does, it doesn't mean the packages upstream |
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won't cause some issues or that you won't run into hard blocks that have |
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to be handled manually. |
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|
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I been using Gentoo since 2003. I've read some horror stories on |
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waiting to update for a year or more. It's no fun. Many years ago, it |
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would be almost impossible. |
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|
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Dale |
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|
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:-) :-) |
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