On Tue, 26 Feb 2013 18:37:16 +0100 (CET)
"Peter Gantner \(nephros\)" <gentoo@nephros.org> wrote:

> Actually I have always wondered why the kernels are SLOTted by
> complete version and not just series. I imagine many peoples lives
> would be easier if they could just unmask xxx-sources:3.4 and
> therefore always get the current "upstream-stable" version of their
> preferred kernel.
> 
> But then there are probably good reasons for the way it is done. (Or, 
> maybe, it is a holdover from 2.6.xx days where the two dots made more 
> sense for SLOTs?)

As an easy way to keep a single kernel version from being unmerged by
a kernel upgrade in Portage, I think.

    emerge gentoo-sources:3.7.9

If you then also have a plain gentoo-sources and a mask on anything
non-3.4 it becomes simple to pick which version you want to stay on as
well as to have the latest sources always available for when you decide
to spent some time upgrading to the latest version on your branch.

    # I want the 3.4 branch! I compile and install 3.4.32.
    echo ">=sys-kernel/gentoo-sources-3.4" >> /etc/portage/package.mask
    emerge gentoo-sources
    emerge --noreplace gentoo-sources:3.4.32

    # After a world update I decide I want to upgrade it, I do 3.4.33.
    emerge -uDN @world
    emerge --noreplace gentoo-sources:3.4.33

    # Ah, 3.4.33 works fine, I can get rid of the old version now.
    emerge -C gentoo-sources:3.4.32
    rm /usr/src/*3.4.32*

If you were to make the SLOTS branch based you would get rid of the
mask line in above example; but its side effect is that it would also
get rid of the easy SLOT syntax which will require you to specify
the full ATOM specification whenever you want to keep a version
around, or unmerge another. This is not worth the change...

Of course, this is just one approach to it; feel free to share a
different work flow if your approach differs from the above one. 


With kind regards,

Tom Wijsman (TomWij)
Gentoo Developer

E-mail address  : TomWij@gentoo.org
GPG Public Key  : 6D34E57D
GPG Fingerprint : C165 AF18 AB4C 400B C3D2  ABF0 95B2 1FCD 6D34 E57D