Re: [gentoo-user] Installing outside of Portage & cruft removal

[Grant]

>> I suppose you and Jesus are right, but what about cruft removal?  Are
>> you saying Gentoo is 100% cruft-free?  I've got a lot of junk in /etc
>> and especially ~/.*
>>
>
> No it isn't, but this is very hard to automate cruft detection via
> scripts as you still have to decide yourself if a file is really needed
> or not.
>
> It is very easy to compare all the files on the filesystem with the list
> of files controlled by portage. But everything that is left over is not
> cruft, because there are files you put somewhere yourself or files that
> are not controlled by portage but are essential to the system. So you
> have to use some kind of ignorelist to exclude files that are not under
> portage control but needed. As you see it is still you who has to decide
> if a file is cruft or not.
>
> I have done something minimalistic that evolved over time and that fits
> my needs. I long refrained from attaching it here, but as this question
> comes up so often I think I will share it. I am not a programming guru
> so there might be bugs or other stuff done in a poor way so don't come
> here and complain if the script has killed your kitten.
>
> I will attach the cruft script written in perl and as an example the
> ignorelist I use for my system and the list of cruft files that remain
> as false positives. You have to customize the ignorelist yourself so it
> does a proper job on your system. I have tried to make the script user
> friendly but it surly isn't so you may have to tinker with it a bit. The
> script actually does not delete anything it just presents you a list of
> files that contains all files on the filesystem minus the files
> controlled by portage and minus the files you have ignored.
>
>
> There is also another cruft script that you may get from overlays but I
> don't remember where. If you search the archives you may find it as it
> has already been mentioned here.
>
> Regards,
>
> Daniel

Thank you Daniel and Dale and everyone for their opinions regarding
this.  Adding a list of files tracked by portage to a list of files
specified by me and reporting on the different sounds like a very
useful thing to me.  Daniel, can you remember anything else about that
cruft script from an overlay?  I can't seem to come up with it from
Google.

Writing an ebuild is best, but sometimes you just want to give a
program a try without writing an ebuild (like everyone else running
Linux does) and a scruft script enables you to do that without making
a mess of your system.

- Grant