[gentoo-dev] Portage Sets

[Alec Warner <antarus@gentoo.org>]

So I have implemented merging of sets (more or less) in a local portage
branch.  However there are some use cases for which the appopriate
action is ambiguous.

Use Case #1:
Set1 = { postfix, gentoolkit, lsof, bind-utils, vixie-cron }

A set of standard tools to be on a machine.  Assume a new install (ie
none of the packages in Set1 are installed).  Is it an error if one of
the packages in the set is masked or unavailable?  In this case I would
say yes; if you instead just skip the masked package (say postfix in
this case because it's convenient ) vixie-cron will pull ssmtp instead
of postfix.

Of course this will also occur if postfix is after vixie-cron in the
set; but for our purposes we will assume the administrator put them in
this order such that postfix will get pulled in.

One could also say that the user should have used emerge -pv set1 and
noticed that ssmtp is being pulled in instead of postfix.

Use Case #2:

Set1 = cat /var/lib/portage/world (the world set)

Assume the world file has 100 packages in it, two which are masked, and
three of which there are no ebuilds in the tree for.  If missing
packages cause an error (which in use case 1 they should imho) then the
user cannot update world without unmasking things properly.  The
packages for which ebuilds are missing in the tree is in fact a portage
bug(I think), and will probably need to be fixed.

Other use cases for sets would be appreciated, as far as behavior.  It
would probably be best to provide some sort of switch.

Unmerging sets is also a fun one, I'm not sure if it's entirely
appropriate yet.
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