[gentoo-dev] System health and portage diagnostics

["Dhruba Bandopadhyay" <dhruba@codewordt.co.uk>]

Hello

Currently, portage has no diagnostic capability as such that could scour
the essential parts of the system and act on anomalies.  Staying on that
thought, frequently, when users have problems with portage they are
resolved by doing the most trivial tasks a fraction of which are given
below.

ldconfig
env-update
source /etc/profile
revdep-rebuild (from gentoolkit)

I wish to propose that all tools that are scattered around the various
packages intended for diagnosing and maintaining system health be
integrated into one and included in portage.  These diagnostics can be
assigned to a command within portage which would not only execute them but
check /etc/make.conf file as well as other essential files for common
syntax errors such as line breaks in CFLAGS and so on.

This proposal is in an attempt to make portage more centralised and self
reliant rather than being reliant upon hacks from gentoolkit which remain
out dated as portage grows.  To me it has always seemed that diagnostic
capability rather than read capability is essential to any system
administration tool as is already present for other mainstream operating
systems and this can go a big way in solving problems before they are
filed as bug reports.

What are your thoughts on the applicability and feasibility of this
matter?  I look forward to hearing from all.

With regards
Dhruba Bandopadhyay

-- 
What if the prophecy is true?  What if tommorrow the war could end?
Isn't that worth fighting for?  Isn't that worth dying for?
    -- Morpheus in 'The Matrix Reloaded' - 23 May 2003



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