Re: [gentoo-portage-dev] Portage questions

[Joakim Tjernlund <joakim.tjernlund@transmode.se>]

On Sun, 2015-09-20 at 09:47 -0700, Zac Medico wrote:
> On 09/16/2015 06:13 AM, Joakim Tjernlund wrote:
> > 1)
> >   Is there a way to generate a snapshot of an installed portage VDB and then later
> >   compare that snapshot against the current VDB and generate a list of
> >   added/updated packages?
> 
> This command will generate a flat file that is useful for comparisons
> with diff -u:
> 
>     qlist -IvCURS | LC_ALL=C sort

I was hoping for something akin to "emerge -pNDu world" but pointing emerge
to another VDB. That would make it easier to see what has changed between then and now.

> 
> > 2)
> >   Currently we generate a tar file with binary pkgs containing all updated pkgs,
> >   unpack the tar file and emerge the binary pkgs with emerge --usepkgonly ...
> >   into a new ROOT. This works but that misses any updates to the profile(both gentoo and our own).
> > 
> >   To fix that we include a copy of both profiles in the tar file and copy our
> >   updated profiles into the new ROOT profiles before merging. This feels a bit
> >   clumsy and I wonder if there is a better way? 
> > 
> >  Jocke
> > 
> 
> Like Duncan said, I feel like we're missing some context here. I wonder
> why you use binary packages instead of a full system image, considering
> that it's a "new ROOT."

Every update to ROOT will be too big if one have use a full system image at every update.
Instead we use BTRFS and create a snapshot of current / in a new BTRFS subvolume
and install the updates into this snapshot, then just change default subvolume in BTRFS and
reboot.
To transfer profile changes before merging binary pkgs one have to copy these into
the new ROOT.

 Jocke