Re: [gentoo-user] Discontinued Package: Copy to local overlay, just leave installed, or install manually?

[tastytea <gentoo@tastytea.de>]

On 2023-02-19 10:24+0100 Matthias Hanft <mh@hanft.de> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> according to https://bugs.gentoo.org/718972 (and a posting
> in the dev list), gsutil (and all needed libs) will be removed
> from the tree because "it's broken" (which is not true - works
> like a charm).
> 
> Since I do need gsutil urgently, I have already copied the needed
> ebuilds from /usr/portage to a local overlay in order to "emerge
> -c gsutil::gentoo" and then "emerge gsutil::local".
> 
> But then came to my mind: Is that necessary at all? As far as I
> know, I can just leave discontinued packages installed and continue
> to use them - regardless of whether they are still in portage tree
> or not. True or false?

Yes, you can just continue to use them. The ebuild will be kept in
/var/db/pkg/ in case portage needs to reinstall them or so.
However, it might make sense to copy it to a local overlay to make it
easier to get an overview of self/un -maintained packages. And since
gsutil requires Python, you'll have to modify the ebuild at some point
anyway to add support for newer Python versions.

> Or is it better to get rid of portage/ebuilds at all and do a
> manual installation, as described at
> https://cloud.google.com/storage/docs/gsutil_install?hl=en ?

I'd say use the ebuild since it already exists. Makes breakage less
likely.

Kind regards, tastytea