Re: [gentoo-user] emerge --update behavior

[Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com>]

On Mon, 02 Jan 2012 04:19:39 -0600
Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:

> Alan McKinnon wrote:
> > The current behaviour is the correct and expected one - you told 
> > portage to emerge something and it did. Why else would you emerge 
> > something if you didn't intend it to become a permanent feature of
> > the system and part of world? This has always been the definition
> > of emerge - to make it permanent. If you want to emerge something
> > and NOT have portage put it in world then you must use the -1
> > option. Remember that emerging something is supposed to be a
> > permanent action that you (as root) intended to happen. If what you
> > intend is something more unusual like a mere test or "just to see
> > what would happen" then you must take additional steps (to make it
> > clear that you are doing something out of the ordinary). It's the
> > same logic as rm uses: the user told the computer to delete a file
> > so the computer did what it was told by it's master and deleted the
> > file. What else would you expect it to do? p.s. before I forget:
> > Happy New Year :-) 
> 
> I didn't tell it to add it to the world file tho, I just told it to 
> update it hence the option --update.  I update things all the time
> but it doesn't mean I want them added to the world file.  If I want
> to emerge something and have it added to the world file, I leave the
> -u option out of it, then it should be added because I requested it
> to be emerged not updated.
> 
> Example:
> 
> emerge phonon
> 
> That means I want it emerged on my system and should be added to the 
> world file.
> 
> emerge -u phonon
> 
> That means I want to update/upgrade phonon.  I don't want it in my
> world file, just updated.  This is the way it worked before --oneshot
> came along.  It is not the way it is now but it was that way a good
> while back.
> 
> Happy New Year to you too.  Mine are getting better.  I lost my Dad
> on New Years Day many years ago.  It's not the same since.


The current behaviour seems more logical to me. You also seem to have
gotten used to the old way and can't see past it :-)

When Zac needs to define when something does, he needs to keep the big
picture in mind to get consistency. So what's the purpose of emerge?
Well, read the DESCRIPTION in the man page:

=====
DESCRIPTION
       emerge  is  the  definitive  command-line interface to the
Portage system.  It is primarily used for installing packages, and
emerge can automatically handle any dependencies that the desired
package has.  emerge can also update the portage tree, making new and
updated packages available.  emerge gracefully handles updating
installed packages to newer  releases  as well.  It handles both source
and binary packages, and it can be used to create binary packages for
distribution.
=====

Obviously it must maintain system and the world file to do this. That
is the primary function, everything else is secondary. When emerge
merges something to the live system, it puts everything listed on the
command line into world; everything brought along automagically as
a dep does not go into world. Any changes to that purpose must have a
very good reason.

Emergeing something puts it in world, we have established that. But
this thing called an "update" does not imply that the packages are not
to go in world - an update is just an update, not "merge this but also
do something weird with world". Actually --update makes little sense
with just individual packages, if they are not already installed they
will be (which is exactly what you get by omitting --update). It does
make a lot of sense when used with system, world, and sets though.

So it seems to me Zac has removed a peculiar bahaviour and made it much
more consistent:

When you emerge packages explicitly by name, they go into world always.
The only way to do it differently is to use -1 which tells portage to
not put them in world.

Makes sense to me.

-- 
Alan McKinnnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com