Re: [gentoo-dev] Init systems portage category

[Robert Bradbury <robert.bradbury@gmail.com>]

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On Mon, Oct 12, 2009 at 11:39 AM, Victor Ostorga <vostorga@gentoo.org>wrote:

>
> I don't know the history about init systems category, but obviously is
> necessary to stablish a category into which init systems should live
> happy forever (sys-init ? app-init? foobar?).
>
>
I don't know what you want to call it, "sys-init" perhaps.  But it, and a
number of other packages, e.g. sys-apps/util-linux (which includes mount and
fsck), openrc, bash, udev, etc. belong in a "special" category for "packages
which could prevent the system from booting or corrupt file systems" if the
emerges do not work perfectly.  I get hung up once or twice a year by
semi-auto-emerging a package not realizing that it is a potential
show-stopper that should be closely monitored (or which should require an
immediate system reboot to see if it broke anything).  In contrast, you
could break any of the various X libraries, browsers, etc. and still have a
system from which one could fall back/forward.

Right now one only knows if an emerge is "N"ew or an "U"pgrade with little
indication as to how badly it could go wrong.

As far as I know there is no "critical packages" list (or class) which
include those that are likely to create much bigger headaches than common
emerge failures (for example this would include all executables used by the
init/openrc processes) which under ideal circumstances would be part of a
single package that could be compiled with a "static" option.

Robert

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