Gentoo Archives: gentoo-user

From: Holly Bostick <motub@××××××.nl>
To: gentoo-user@l.g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] browser,news,mail
Date: Sat, 27 Aug 2005 18:51:40
Message-Id: 4310B493.30703@planet.nl
In Reply to: RE: [gentoo-user] browser,news,mail by John Dangler
1 John Dangler schreef:
2 > I just found some docs on this that say "Large organizations that require an
3 > integrated suite (past Netscape Communicator users) should consider moving
4 > towards Mozilla 1.7. All others should consider upgrading to Firefox and
5 > Thunderbird."
6 >
7 > So, I guess the question becomes, can I unmerge Mozilla and emerge Firefox
8 > and Thunderbird? Or do they need to see Mozilla libs somewhere, since
9 > they're offered by the same org?
10 >
11
12 The answer to your question is "yes and no".
13
14 Not because Firefox needs Mozilla to run (it doesn't), but because you
15 have emerged the gnome meta-package, of which the Mozilla Suite is a
16 (deep) dependency (because the full GNOME installation installs GNOME's
17 web browser, Epiphany, which directly depends on Mozilla).
18
19 So if you uninstall Mozilla now, you will 1) break Epiphany, and 2)
20 break the meta-package. GNOME will still work, except for Epiphany, but
21 Portage will at some point become aware that one of the dependencies for
22 one of your installed applications-- in this case, the gnome
23 meta-package-- has been uninstalled. Which is, of course, not cool as
24 far as Portage is concerned, so it will, of course, attempt to reinstall
25 Mozilla at every opportunity.
26
27 Which is kind of a PITA, if you went to all the trouble to uninstall it
28 in the first place.
29
30 The solution? Replace the 'gnome' metapackage with the 'gnome-light'
31 metapackage, which installs a full GNOME desktop, without the
32 applications that could be considered 'cruft', such as Mozilla,
33 sound-juicer, Totem, Evolution (and Evolution Data Server) and GStreamer.
34
35 How do you switch when GNOME is already installed?
36
37 1) emerge -C gnome.
38
39 This will *not* unmerge any applications, just the metapackage itself,
40 thereby orphaning the dependencies that you want to uninstall.
41
42 2) emerge -C the 'extra' programs you don't want (Mozilla, Epiphany,
43
44 Evo, EDS, Totem, Sound Juicer, whatever). Also make sure that your USE
45 flags conform to your choices (add -mozilla, and also -eds if you don't
46 want evolution-data-server to be re-emerged when you upgrade gnome-panel).
47
48 3) emerge gnome-light
49
50 This will not emerge anything new (unless you ripped out Nautilus or
51 something in your purge ;) ), but will 'adopt' all the orphaned GNOME
52 desktop dependencies that were orphaned by your unmerge of the gnome
53 meta-package, so when you next emerge -uDv world, if there are updates
54 to GNOME, they will be picked up (because they are dependencies of the
55 gnome-light package).
56
57 Hope this helps,
58 Holly
59 --
60 gentoo-user@g.o mailing list

Replies

Subject Author
RE: [gentoo-user] browser,news,mail John Dangler <jdangler@××××××××.net>