[gentoo-user] package masked perl left and right... what now??

[gentoo-user] package masked perl left and right... what now??

[Michael Higgins]

After the better part of an hour spent manually unmasking inexplicably newly-masked dependencies of installed packages, I finally:

grep dev-perl /usr/portage/profiles/package.mask >> /etc/portage/package.unmask

... so I could !@#$%^&*()_ get on with an updated system.

So, did anyone on this list have forewarning that gentoo's perl maintainability was about to be trashed?  Or like, did I miss some new portage feature that would have solved this for me?

(I emailed the dev apparently responsible for this borkage directly, but he hasn't replied, yet.)

I've often wondered (more and more often now it seems) where I can get a heads up that the devs are about to cause major pain. Is there such a beast?

Never do I see an announcement on the -dev list like, "hey guys, check it out: next week I'm gonna make perl users maintaining Gentoo servers wish they used python instead", or something useful like this. '-)

Any thoughts or insight to this from the list?

Cheers,

-- 
 |\  /|        |   |          ~ ~  
 | \/ |        |---|          `|` ?
 |    |ichael  |   |iggins    \^ /
 michael.higgins[at]evolone[dot]org

Re: [gentoo-user] package masked perl left and right... what now??

[Daniel Pielmeier]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 191 bytes --]

Michael Higgins schrieb am 18.11.2008 20:51:

<some stuff>

From the gentoo-dev mailing list!

http://groups.google.com/group/linux.gentoo.dev/browse_thread/thread/f9c2abaea5e391b2#


[-- Attachment #2: OpenPGP digital signature --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 260 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-user] package masked perl left and right... what now??

[Michael Higgins]

On Tue, 18 Nov 2008 11:51:06 -0800
Michael Higgins <linux@evolone.org> wrote:


To follow up, since I posted to the list, I got a reply from the maintainer who did this, who referred me here:

https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=247413#c1

Which also contains the explanation, "Some perl modules were moved from dev-perl/ to perl-core/. This took longer than the time between two rsync mirror updates. So you have fetched an inconsistent portage tree."

All I can say (beyond "WTF") is *wow*, someone did something knowing it would/could/did create havoc, but didn't bother to broadcast it to those it would affect. (I say this knowing that maybe there is some way to find out about stuff before getting burned by it, but I don't know about it if there is such a beast. I suppose I could read every new post at B.G.O.?)

At least now I know what happened, but not why it was allowed to happen. I suppose having an inconsistent tree is a risk with any packages maintained by gentoo folks? If so, why doesn't this happen more often? Hmm.

Cheers,

-- 
 |\  /|        |   |          ~ ~  
 | \/ |        |---|          `|` ?
 |    |ichael  |   |iggins    \^ /
 michael.higgins[at]evolone[dot]org

Re: [gentoo-user] package masked perl left and right... what now??

[Alan McKinnon]

On Tuesday 18 November 2008 21:51:06 Michael Higgins wrote:

> I've often wondered (more and more often now it seems) where I can get a
> heads up that the devs are about to cause major pain. Is there such a
> beast?
>
> Never do I see an announcement on the -dev list like, "hey guys, check it
> out: next week I'm gonna make perl users maintaining Gentoo servers wish
> they used python instead", or something useful like this. '-)
>
> Any thoughts or insight to this from the list?
>
> Cheers,

Well, there's this:


$ grep -C1 perl /var/portage/profiles/package.mask

# Torsten Veller <tove@gentoo.org> (1 Nov 2008)
# Adding new dual-lifed modules for perl-5.10
virtual/perl-Archive-Tar
virtual/perl-Class-ISA
virtual/perl-Compress-Raw-Zlib
virtual/perl-Compress-Zlib
virtual/perl-Digest-SHA
[followed by big long list of stuff]

these days I pretty much always read the new stuff at the top of that file 
after a sync and before emerge world. Reduces surprise a little

-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

Re: [gentoo-user] package masked perl left and right... what now??

[Alan McKinnon]

On Tuesday 18 November 2008 22:13:14 Michael Higgins wrote:
> At least now I know what happened, but not why it was allowed to happen. I
> suppose having an inconsistent tree is a risk with any packages maintained
> by gentoo folks? If so, why doesn't this happen more often? Hmm.

Because the time interval between commits that do this is actually quite 
short, probably minutes. The odds of you getting an inconsistent copy that a. 
affects you and b. happened in exactly those few minutes to matter makes the 
event quite rare.

Plus, intrusive changes like this don't happen often at all. Sooner or later 
it will affect someone, just like sooner or later someone will win the first 
prize at the village raffle :-)

-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

Re: [gentoo-user] package masked perl left and right... what now??

[Stroller]

On 18 Nov 2008, at 20:13, Michael Higgins wrote:
> ...
> All I can say (beyond "WTF") is *wow*, someone did something knowing  
> it would/could/did create havoc, but didn't bother to broadcast it  
> to those it would affect.

That's because havoc is The Gentoo Way (tm).
:D

Stroller.