Re: [gentoo-user] "masked by: EAPI 7" trying up update "portage" - how to proceed

[Michael <confabulate@kintzios.com>]

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On Friday, 12 June 2020 15:00:25 BST Jack wrote:
> On 6/12/20 9:49 AM, Rich Freeman wrote:
> > On Fri, Jun 12, 2020 at 4:00 AM n952162 <n952162@web.de> wrote:
> >> On 2020-06-12 08:40, n952162 wrote:
> >>>> BTW, is it becoming clear why it is best to update Gentoo at least
> >>>> ever few months?  :)
> >>> 
> >>> Well, yes, but it's really pretty onerous.  If you have gentoo in
> >>> embedded systems, you've got to spend considerable administrative effort
> >>> in each one just maintaining the status quo.
> >>> 
> >>> I mean, there's no competition to gentoo, of course.  But a design goal
> >>> could be to have a one-step sync, of some sort.
> >> 
> >> Maybe one way to work in that direction would be to have regular - say,
> >> yearly - "releases", kind of like other distributions do, but on an
> >> ebuild basis, re-establishing a common base point.
> > 
> > Well, you already can just use a snapshot of the repository from any
> > date in time, though things like patches might not be mirrored any
> > longer so that isn't a perfect solution.
> > 
> > Ultimately if there was enough interest in something like this the
> > solution would probably be another distro that just repackages Gentoo
> > in a release-based format.  Release-based distros have their pros and
> > cons, but they're definitely a better fit for some problems.
> > 
> > One of the issues with Gentoo is that it is fairly niche and so you
> > don't have the manpower to support 47 forks.  With Debian you have a
> > bazillion derivatives - half of them are just bundling a different set
> > of default packages.  Ubuntu has a Desktop and Server version of the
> > distro, and they also have flavors for various desktop environments.
> > Gentoo basically has just barely enough manpower to support having
> > Gentoo.  We try to accommodate as much choice as possible in how it
> > gets used which is why this model works as well as it does.  However,
> > we can't support having a Gentoo flavor that is GPL-only, or GPL-free,
> > or FOSS-only, or no-systemd-in-the-repo, or initial install optimized
> > for people who read braille.  You can actually tailor Gentoo towards
> > just about any of those directions with some config file tweaks, but
> > you can't just pick the one of 300 iso images that most closely fit
> > your needs and run the autoinstaller and forget about it.
> 
> What about some sort of tagging?  Not bundling or packaging, just
> occasional (quarterly?) labels, with a matrix indicating how difficult
> it would be to upgrade.  A hint to folks who tend to update less often
> than they should.  A "heads up" that things added or upgraded in the
> past quarter are going to be very difficult to do if you are starting
> with something more than three/five/...? quarters older than that.  Of
> course, I suppose if you read the news items as they are released, then
> you should have a pretty good idea of which of them are likely to bite
> you if you wait too long.

Perhaps I misunderstand this, but isn't it as simple as booting off a LiveCD/
USB, chrooting, changing profiles, cleaning up world file and letting rip with 
a full 'emerge -e' @system, followed by @world for good measure?

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