From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from lists.gentoo.org (pigeon.gentoo.org [208.92.234.80]) by finch.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id AEC4013881D for ; Sat, 26 Sep 2015 16:47:41 +0000 (UTC) Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with SMTP id CFFF821C03C; Sat, 26 Sep 2015 16:47:33 +0000 (UTC) Received: from mail.digimed.co.uk (82-69-83-178.dsl.in-addr.zen.co.uk [82.69.83.178]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3D7D921C00E for ; Sat, 26 Sep 2015 16:47:30 +0000 (UTC) Received: from digimed.co.uk (yooden.digimed.co.uk [192.168.1.6]) by mail.digimed.co.uk (Postfix) with ESMTPA id E7014194EFB for ; Sat, 26 Sep 2015 17:47:28 +0100 (BST) Date: Sat, 26 Sep 2015 17:47:28 +0100 From: Neil Bothwick To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] update problems Message-ID: <20150926174728.06d4d07e@digimed.co.uk> In-Reply-To: <874mihe36v.fsf@heimdali.yagibdah.de> References: <87eghucic9.fsf@heimdali.yagibdah.de> <55FDBE16.1070404@gmail.com> <874mipcgm9.fsf@heimdali.yagibdah.de> <2096705.7mWRWRVp3b@eve> <874mihe36v.fsf@heimdali.yagibdah.de> Organization: Digital Media Production X-Mailer: Claws Mail 3.12.0-88-gd46367 (GTK+ 2.24.28; x86_64-pc-linux-gnu) X-GPG-Fingerprint: 7260 0F33 97EC 2F1E 7667 FE37 BA6E 1A97 4375 1903 Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Id: Gentoo Linux mail X-BeenThere: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Reply-to: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/signed; micalg=pgp-sha1; boundary="Sig_/LIoK2B00SKyj5DpL5+6DkYt"; protocol="application/pgp-signature" X-Archives-Salt: 1e7098de-5aa2-49d1-acea-0cdd48c8ca63 X-Archives-Hash: c4de7d74b18f0db33240ebe935b9b353 --Sig_/LIoK2B00SKyj5DpL5+6DkYt Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On Sat, 26 Sep 2015 15:10:48 +0200, lee wrote: > It seems that everyone has the problem that some versions of some > packages don't go together with some versions of other packages the > 'some versions of some packages' depend on. That's just life, and 99% of th time it either doesn't matter or is handled by slots. A and B depend on C. A new version of C comes out but A can't work with it, so portage doesn't update it. B is still happy because it always worked with the older C, portage just tells you why it hasn't updated C. =20 > Then emerge comes along and points this out as an extremely serious > problem while all it takes to solve this problem is someone convincing > the person observing what emerge does that the apparently serious > problems aren't relevant at all. It didn't say it was serious, although the overuse of exclamation marks could be seen as implying that (I have an automatic exclamation mark filter, so I don't really notice them). > So who is at fault here? The user taking emerges warnings seriously > because they don't want to break their system, or emerge by making > irrelevant warnings appear as being so serious problems that the > unsuspecting user gets so confused and scared of breaking their system > that they start to ask questions on mailing lists? The problem is that portage does not clearly distinguish between information, warnings and error messages. The simplest way of looking at it is "does this stop the emerge proceeding". In your original case, that was not the case. The emerge did stop, but because of the thing with hdf5 and the threads USE flag. Once you had cleared that, the emerge would most likely have proceeded despite the messages. =20 > > quickpkg is really quick. > > Then, to reinstall from that: emerge -vak1 dev-libs/boost =20 >=20 > Oh, it's the whole updating thing. Besides a chance that I'll have to > fix something, it also brings in a new kernel to make and to install. > That takes time. Only if you do it. Unless your existing kernel has stopped working, why the rush to build a new one? =20 > > The more freedom with the package manager, the more conflicts you > > might encounter. =20 >=20 > That doesn't mean that the package manager should be unable to provide > the user with a number of possible solutions and let them pick one. It did, it told you to add one USE flag or remove another. > Particularly, it doesn't mean that the package manager should give the > impression that things might go horribly wrong when some action is > performed unless they actually will. No, it shouldn't. But it is already well established that portage's output can be opaque from a user's perspective. That's a well trodden path that is not worth revisiting unless you can help with a solution. =20 > >> Where and how do the above messages give me choices? They are > >> telling me that boost doesn't work with itself, =20 No they aren't. They are saying that boost will not be upgraded, they are not saying that anything will not work. I've been seeing almost identical messages about ocaml for months now, things still work with the version I had before the messages began. > > There is, several in fact. > > One is called "Backups" =20 >=20 > You seriously expect a backup just to be able to undo an emerge --sync? Absolutely. All sync does is update the contents of a directory, if you backed up that directory you could restore it. > Ok, then make it as easy to boot from ZFS as it is to boot from ext4. >=20 > On a side note, how difficult or easy, and how advisable, is booting > from btrfs, particularly for a xen PV guest which might have the kernel > residing on the host? (I might prefer that over using lvm.) I don't know about Xen, but on real hardware it's as simple as ext4 with a single drive, and transparently handled by dracut if you use RAID. > > The other one is portage snapshots. =20 >=20 > That sounds like something I should learn about. See above re backups, it's just a tarball of the portage tree. --=20 Neil Bothwick But there, everything has its drawbacks, as the man said when his mother-in-law died, and they came down upon him for the funeral expenses. -- Jerome K. Jerome --Sig_/LIoK2B00SKyj5DpL5+6DkYt Content-Type: application/pgp-signature Content-Description: OpenPGP digital signature -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2 iEYEARECAAYFAlYGzCAACgkQum4al0N1GQOCwwCg2ApQaNzE1UCvc/knxppHJpN2 XfIAoMeN7iJxe55ixT32vYHtH1a/xOhI =cXhU -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --Sig_/LIoK2B00SKyj5DpL5+6DkYt--