Re: [gentoo-portage-dev] Portage questions

[Zac Medico <zmedico@gentoo.org>]

On 09/21/2015 06:45 AM, Joakim Tjernlund wrote:
> 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.

You can export the EPREFIX variable in order to make emerge enter prefix
mode.

>>
>>> 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
> 

I suppose that emerge --sync is what most people use for this. To
distribute your profiles, you might configure portage to sync from your
own rsync server.
-- 
Thanks,
Zac