Re: [gentoo-user] emerge --update behavior

[Mark Knecht]

On Mon, Jan 2, 2012 at 8:57 AM, Neil Bothwick <neil@××××××××××.uk> wrote:
> On Mon, 02 Jan 2012 10:35:46 -0500, Tanstaafl wrote:
>
>> > 2) I forget the -1 sometimes when I do an individual package update.
>> > However I generally remember to go back and hand edit the world file
>> > once a quarter or so and remove anything that isn't a real
>> > application, etc.
>>
>> How do you tell which is which?
>
> By running --depclean -p afterwards. If it wants to remove something you
> need, add it to world with emerge -n.
>
>
> --
> Neil Bothwick

That works for the case where the software is managed by portage,
which is likely 99.9999% of what's on Gentoo systems worldwide. It
doesn't work however for the odd case where I write some little
program which requires a library (ta-lib in my portage file) and I
don't write an ebuild to build it. I've never bothered to learn to do
my own ebuilds but at some level it would be a good idea, and I think
it would address Mr. Orlitsky's issue about what his users need and
why. If they are on Gentoo then they could write a simple ebuild that
did nothing but install the packages they want. That ebuild goes into
world and let's him understand why every package in on the system. In
the earlier example if all 4 files were required then this user ebuild
has 4 entries in it. They ask him to run it, he runs it, it's in
world. End of package issue I think.

It doesn't address more system'ish things like editing config file to
support those things, etc, but I don't know how that gets done unless
he grants sudo to them, etc.

Just an idea.

Cheers,
Mark