[gentoo-user] Question about Portage Update

[gentoo-user] Question about Portage Update

[William Gabriel]

Hello and Happy New Year to everybody:

I want to start this post off by stressing that I am not complaining,
but merely inquiring.

I have recently become interested in learning Ruby and Ruby on Rails.
I installed Ruby onto my system using Portage, and it happened to be
the version (1.8.2) required for Rails.

I got comfortable with Ruby, and I now want to install Rails.  I
started with the typical 'emerge --sync' and found that the most
recent version of Rails in Portage is 0.13.1.  A lot of work has gone
into Rails to get it to version 1.0.0, and that is the version I would
like to install.  Naturally, I would also like Portage to manage the
installation over manually installing it.

My main question has to do with about how Portage gets updated.  Is
there some central authority that updates the repository, or is it any
user that is interested in making a Portage package?  How often does
software get updated (it seems like Ruby was pretty close to
up-to-date, but Rails was a little behind).

Is there any way that I can help update the package?  Is there
documentation for updating packages?  And where would I find the
0.13.1 package source so that I have a base to work with?  And then
how wou submit the new package to the central repository?

Thanks,
Bill

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Re: [gentoo-user] Question about Portage Update

[Brett I. Holcomb]

First check and see if a newer version is available but masked. You can do

ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~x86" emerge -s ruby 

and see what you get.  Disclaimer - DO NOT install it using the 
ACCEPT_KEYWORD!

If a newer version is there then update the /etc/portage/package.keyword file.

To contribute create an ebuild and submit it on bugzilla.  First search 
bugzilla to see if it's already there.   If Rail is maintained you might also 
contact the maintainer to see what his plans are.

On Sunday 01 January 2006 15:18, William Gabriel wrote:
> Hello and Happy New Year to everybody:
>
> I want to start this post off by stressing that I am not complaining,
> but merely inquiring.
>
> I have recently become interested in learning Ruby and Ruby on Rails.
> I installed Ruby onto my system using Portage, and it happened to be
> the version (1.8.2) required for Rails.
>
>
> My main question has to do with about how Portage gets updated.  Is
> there some central authority that updates the repository, or is it any
> user that is interested in making a Portage package?  How often does
> software get updated (it seems like Ruby was pretty close to
> up-to-date, but Rails was a little behind).
>
> Is there any way that I can help update the package?  Is there
> documentation for updating packages?  And where would I find the
> 0.13.1 package source so that I have a base to work with?  And then
> how wou submit the new package to the central repository?
>
> Thanks,
> Bill

-- 

Brett I. Holcomb
-- 
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Re: [gentoo-user] Question about Portage Update

[Abhay Kedia]

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On Monday 02 January 2006 01:48, William Gabriel wrote:
>
> I got comfortable with Ruby, and I now want to install Rails.  I
> started with the typical 'emerge --sync' and found that the most
> recent version of Rails in Portage is 0.13.1.  A lot of work has gone
> into Rails to get it to version 1.0.0, and that is the version I would
> like to install.
>
Rails 1.0.0 is masked. Unmask it and install. Didn't read the documentation 
about masked packages, huh?
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml?part=2
http://gentoo-wiki.com/Masked

Regards,
Abhay

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Re: [gentoo-user] Question about Portage Update

[Etaoin Shrdlu]

On Sunday 01 January 2006 21:18, William Gabriel wrote:

> I want to start this post off by stressing that I am not complaining,
> but merely inquiring.

There is nothing to complain about in what happened to you, it's just the 
expected behaviour if your system is x86 (read on for the details).

> I got comfortable with Ruby, and I now want to install Rails.  I
> started with the typical 'emerge --sync' and found that the most
> recent version of Rails in Portage is 0.13.1.  A lot of work has gone
> into Rails to get it to version 1.0.0, and that is the version I would
> like to install.  Naturally, I would also like Portage to manage the
> installation over manually installing it.

Yes, it's very simple. Create the file /etc/portage/package.keywords (if 
it doesn't exist already) and put the following lines in it:

dev-ruby/rails ~x86
dev-ruby/activerecord ~x86
dev-ruby/activesupport ~x86
dev-ruby/actionmailer ~x86
dev-ruby/actionpack ~x86
dev-ruby/actionwebservice ~x86

Then try to reemerge rails and it shuld bring in version 1.0.0 (depending 
on your setup, it might be necessary to add a few other packages 
in /etc/portage/package.keywords).

> My main question has to do with about how Portage gets updated.  Is
> there some central authority that updates the repository, or is it any
> user that is interested in making a Portage package?  How often does
> software get updated (it seems like Ruby was pretty close to
> up-to-date, but Rails was a little behind).
>
> Is there any way that I can help update the package?  Is there
> documentation for updating packages?  And where would I find the
> 0.13.1 package source so that I have a base to work with?  And then
> how wou submit the new package to the central repository?

I suggest you read the handbook, part 2 and 3 to get the basics of how 
portage works, and in particular this:

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml?part=3&chap=3

to learn about the different software branches gentoo provides (ie, "x86" 
and "~x86" for the x86 architecture, "sparc" and "~sparc" for the sparc, 
etc.).

In short, the software you need *is* in portage, but is marked 
"unstable" (~x86). "Unstable" here does not necessarily mean that it 
doesn't work (in that case it would be marked -* or not keyworded at all 
for your arch), but simply that it has not received a sufficient amount 
of testing to be considered "stable". Packages marked ~x86 usually work 
just fine. Some people even run their whole system in ~x86, by changing 
the ACCEPT_KEYWORDS variable in /etc/make.conf.

HTH
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