Re: [gentoo-user] `sets' & sets.conf

[Alan McKinnon]

On 19/11/2016 18:04, Harry Putnam wrote:
> Can anyone post, in laymans, terms how to use sets.conf.  Or thru
> FEATURES if thats how its done, I've read the posrtage manpage that
> covers it and this URL:
>
> https://dev.gentoo.org/~zmedico/portage/doc/ch02s02.html#config-set-syntax-single
>
> Finally reinstalled portage with USE="doc" to get the html set
> referred to in portage manual as the definitive place to learn about sets
>
> But honestly I left those without a stinking clue how to actually use sets
> for things like avoiding specific packages being depcleaned.  I mean
> besides putting them in `world'
>
> There seems to be a durth of what actually to put into make.conf under
> FEATURES or whatever...
>
> I want to protect certain pkgs from depclean.... how can I put a small
> list under `sets' management in make.conf or sets.conf or ....
>
>


there are some rather old docs floating around that describe amazing
things you can do with sets, but I think those were flights of fantasy
and never got implemented. The main feature of sets is simply this:

list a bunch of packages in a text file in the right place, and the now
have a set named the same as the file name. You can emerge this set
using an "@" like:

emerge @harry_set

Effectively, the packages in @harry_set are effectively in world,
without actually being in the world file. The set instead is in
/var/lib/portage/world_sets.

Think of it as sort of like a magic meta-package that you define - a set
gets merged as a unit and where you unmerge it, the sets is out of world
and depclean will take care of removing the members.

Simple as that.  I'm not aware of anything in FEATURES related to sets,
you just use them out the box.


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