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

[Daniel Pielmeier]

Grant schrieb am 26.01.2009 18:35:
>
> 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