Re: [gentoo-user] Pseudo first impressions

[lee]

Alan Mackenzie <acm@×××.de> writes:

> For a start, I could barely read parts of it, which were displayed in
> dark blue text on a black background.

Yes, that always annoys me, too.  You need to copy it from the terminal
and paste it into emacs, and then it's still not exactly readable or
even understandable.

> Setting up /etc/portage/color.map is not the first thing a new user
> should have to do to be able to read messages from emerge.  This is,
> however, something I knew had to be done, and I did it.

I didn't know that there's such a thing.  That should be mentioned in
the docs.

> The error message was "Multiple package instances within a single
> package slot have been pulled into the dependency graph, resulting in a
> slot conflict:".  Uhh???

Yeah, I never saw that graph.

> Is this gobbledegook really what a new user should be seeing, having not
> yet installed any packages, bar a very few, beyond what is requisite to
> bringing a new machine up?

The common answer to this is that the devs don't have time and/or can't
be bothered to improve this, and it's too complicated anyway.

> The actual conflict packages are:
>     dev-lang/perl-5.24.1-r1:0/5.24::gentoo
>   and
>     dev-lang/perl-5.22.3-rc4:0/5.22::gentoo
> , "pulled in" by internal system packages I've got no direct interest
> in, plus, shockingly, "and 2 more with the same problem" and "and 5 more
> with the same problem".

It's usually hundreds, not only 2 or 5.

> I'm glad I've got the experience with Gentoo to know it's worth
> ploughing on through these messes.

How's all the pain worth it?  It's not even all about the pain, it's
about keeping things working and up to date.  Even just that may be
impossible with Gentoo, even if you have the time.

> Other than that, it seems like a pretty ghastly mistake by Gentoo's
> quality control.  I know none of you get paid for it, and you all do it
> for love.  I admit I probably wouldn't have done the job much better
> myself.  But for Gentoo's sake, something needs to get better.

Being able to update at all would be a good start.


BTW, what's with this:


emerge -a feh
[...]
!!! existing preserved libs:
>>> package: sys-libs/binutils-libs-2.27
 *  - /usr/lib64/libbfd-2.25.1.so
 *      used by /usr/lib64/binutils/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu/2.25.1/libopcodes-2.25.1.so (sys-devel/binutils-2.25.1-r1)
Use emerge @preserved-rebuild to rebuild packages using these libraries

emerge @preserved-rebuild
[...]
>>> Emerging (1 of 1) sys-devel/binutils-2.25.1-r1::gentoo
[...]
>>> Installing (1 of 1) sys-devel/binutils-2.25.1-r1::gentoo
>>> Jobs: 1 of 1 complete                           Load avg: 3.41, 1.36, 0.60
[...]
!!! existing preserved libs:
>>> package: sys-libs/binutils-libs-2.27
 *  - /usr/lib64/libbfd-2.25.1.so
 *      used by /usr/lib64/binutils/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu/2.25.1/libopcodes-2.25.1.so (sys-devel/binutils-2.25.1-r1)
Use emerge @preserved-rebuild to rebuild packages using these libraries



It's not possible to emerge net-dns/bind (I'm guessing that might be
because of binutils having some issue) and mysql-workbench.  The old
version of bind is still working, but what if it wasn't already
installed?  Also, I had to patch dev-perl/GD to get that to work.  What
will fail next?

So yes, it's not only about updates but about installing something in
general: It may work or not, and it may break other things or not, or it
may require you to do something because something has been pulled into
something by something, or you need to remove something, or something
doesn't work because of something ...


-- 
"Didn't work" is an error.