Re: [gentoo-user] emerge --update behavior

[Alan McKinnon]

On Mon, 02 Jan 2012 08:50:36 -0500
Michael Orlitzky <michael@××××××××.com> wrote:

> On 01/02/2012 08:36 AM, Neil Bothwick wrote:
> > On Mon, 02 Jan 2012 05:06:32 -0600, Dale wrote:
> >
> >> That's why I fixed the new way to be closer to what I am used to.
> >> I added --oneshot to my make.conf.  When I really need to add
> >> something to world, I just use --select y -nav.  To me, that is a
> >> lot of extra steps to be "consistent".
> >
> > You are trying to be "consistent" with your memory of how things
> > used to work (which is flawed, oneshot has been around a lot longer
> > than you think). Zac is looking for self-consistency.
> >
> > Unfortunately, this is one of those cases where there is no
> > overriding argument in favour of one way or the other, prejudice
> > and inertia play more of a part than logic for most people.
>
> Sure there is: adding a package to the world file can screw up your
> system if it's unintentional.
>
> *Not* adding the package to world when you do an update is *not*
> harmful, because,
>
>    * Nobody would use --update to install a new package
>    * Depclean can show you that you made a mistake
>

There's a deeper more fundamental assumption at work here, and it's the
targeted userbase.

Devs assume Gentoo users use Gentoo because the user wants control and
tells the computer what to do. By and large that's how it works (except
for catastrophic or unrecoverable errors like unmerging python or
portage).

So when the user tells portage to emerge (not merge) something it goes
in world as obviously that's what the user wanted. Presumably the user
knows what they are doing and can deal with both pieces. If the user
would rather have software hold his hand, that user is better served by
Windows or Ubuntu or any number of user-centric distros, but probably
not by Gentoo.

This isn't elitist, it's just the way things are. Portage's job is to
listen to *you*, not to to tell you what you want. The automation
portage provides is just the logical conclusion of what should happen
in future after you emerged something.

-- 
Alan McKinnnon
alan.mckinnon@×××××.com