From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org ([208.92.234.80] helo=lists.gentoo.org) by finch.gentoo.org with esmtp (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1MDIFG-0003Qf-3F for garchives@archives.gentoo.org; Sun, 07 Jun 2009 13:17:06 +0000 Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 703BDE01DC; Sun, 7 Jun 2009 13:17:04 +0000 (UTC) Received: from smtp.gentoo.org (smtp.gentoo.org [140.211.166.183]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3BB65E01DC for ; Sun, 7 Jun 2009 13:17:04 +0000 (UTC) Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by smtp.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D1563673E1 for ; Sun, 7 Jun 2009 13:17:03 +0000 (UTC) X-Virus-Scanned: amavisd-new at gentoo.org X-Spam-Score: -2.952 X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-2.952 required=5.5 tests=[AWL=0.647, BAYES_00=-2.599, RCVD_IN_DNSWL_LOW=-1] Received: from smtp.gentoo.org ([127.0.0.1]) by localhost (smtp.gentoo.org [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10024) with ESMTP id ysuW2Zgv4HiA for ; Sun, 7 Jun 2009 13:16:57 +0000 (UTC) Received: from ciao.gmane.org (main.gmane.org [80.91.229.2]) (using TLSv1 with cipher AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by smtp.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 58BCA67413 for ; Sun, 7 Jun 2009 13:16:56 +0000 (UTC) Received: from list by ciao.gmane.org with local (Exim 4.43) id 1MDIF1-0007Vt-Kr for gentoo-dev@gentoo.org; Sun, 07 Jun 2009 13:16:51 +0000 Received: from ip68-231-21-207.ph.ph.cox.net ([68.231.21.207]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Sun, 07 Jun 2009 13:16:51 +0000 Received: from 1i5t5.duncan by ip68-231-21-207.ph.ph.cox.net with local (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Sun, 07 Jun 2009 13:16:51 +0000 X-Injected-Via-Gmane: http://gmane.org/ To: gentoo-dev@lists.gentoo.org From: Duncan <1i5t5.duncan@cox.net> Subject: [gentoo-dev] Re: GLEP 55 Version 2 Date: Sun, 7 Jun 2009 13:16:41 +0000 (UTC) Message-ID: References: <1244327519.3832.1@NeddySeagoon> <3301550.byxQsPLUxs@news.friendly-coders.info> <18987.35220.808040.666422@a1ihome1.kph.uni-mainz.de> <4A2BAAA9.4030503@gentoo.org> Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Id: Gentoo Linux mail X-BeenThere: gentoo-dev@lists.gentoo.org Reply-to: gentoo-dev@lists.gentoo.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org X-Gmane-NNTP-Posting-Host: ip68-231-21-207.ph.ph.cox.net User-Agent: Pan/0.133 (House of Butterflies) Sender: news Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Archives-Salt: 794b8f85-30e4-4c21-9a2e-833c22046759 X-Archives-Hash: 7fc96981dbe209f75eb23a1b58337c6c Richard Freeman posted 4A2BAAA9.4030503@gentoo.org, excerpted below, on Sun, 07 Jun 2009 07:55:21 -0400: > As far as an upgrade path goes - we could provide a one-time tarball > that will update portage (and its essential dependencies) to a version > that can get users out of this bind. If a user has a system THAT old > then they might just want to extract a stage1 tarball (manually - > without overwriting /etc without care) and go from there. We've done the tarball thing a couple times before, with portage I think,= =20 with amd64/gcc for certain, as it was needed to get out of some sort of=20 multilib and profile based bind IIRC, and with the in-tree profiles (from= =20 pre-cascade profiles) at least once too, IIRC. > I'm not sure that gentoo generally supports graceful upgrades from very > ancient systems to modern ones without keeping up to date. Other > distros can do it since they do ~annual releases and users could just > apply those sequentially. For portage we don't keep around all the > files needed to do a sequential upgrade like this - if a user were to > try to upgrade to a 3-year-old version of some package most likely it > wouldn't be mirrored and upstream might not have it either. AFAIK from what I've read here over the years, Gentoo tries to keep=20 smooth in-tree upgrades to a year out. Beyond that, we don't usually=20 deliberately break it without some warning and a tarball or similar=20 upgrade path for another six months to a year, but it's by no means=20 guaranteed it'll be a smooth upgrade after a year even if we aren't=20 deliberately breaking it. Generally, beyond a year, it's recommended=20 that one uses the stage tarball to get something at least operationally=20 modern, and goes from there. Simply put, Gentoo's NOT in practice a distribution for the folks who=20 like to lollygag around for years between updates. Tho we do try to=20 support it up to a year out and to provide at least some form of likely=20 non-routine upgrade option beyond that, it definitely works best and with= =20 the least trouble for those updating every month or at least once a=20 quarter, with things getting progressively more difficult and troublesome= =20 the further out beyond that you go, simply because of lack of testing if=20 nothing else. > We obviously need to give some thought to not breaking old versions of > portage, but given that portage will be only one of many problems if a > user doesn't do an emerge -u world for 5 years I'm not sure we need a > bulletproof solution... I just realized that I'm right about at my Gentoo 5-year anniversary,=20 with an original installation of 2004.1. (I tried 2004.0 but it didn't=20 work for some reason I never did figure out, but perhaps related to the=20 then new NPTL, which I was trying to enable.) I can't /imagine/ first installing it then, and coming back to it now,=20 expecting anything but a full reinstall from stage tarball (assuming as=20 suppose I would be if I had been that out of it, that was still even=20 /using/ stage tarballs as it was then). Imagine people wondering what=20 happened to xfree86, among other things. I mean, talk about a time- traveler getting confused by the future! --=20 Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs. "Every nonfree program has a lord, a master -- and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman