Re: [gentoo-user] update problems

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

On 26/09/2015 17:00, lee wrote:
> Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com> writes:
> 
>> On 20/09/2015 17:28, lee wrote:
>>> Neil Bothwick <neil@digimed.co.uk> writes:
>>>
>>>> On Sat, 19 Sep 2015 21:36:06 +0200, lee wrote:
> 
>> [...]
>>>>> !!! Multiple package instances within a single package slot have been
>>>>> pulled !!! into the dependency graph, resulting in a slot conflict:
>> [...]
>>>> These are unimportant, it is simply portage telling you it is not
>>>> updating some packages to the latest available and why. Personally, I
>>>> believe this sort of output should only be shown when using --verbose. 
>>>
>> [...]
>>> Should I always ignore such messages?
>>
>> No, you should not ignore such messages. They are printed for a reason.
> 
> Well, what can I do other than ignore them?  With dependencies as they
> are, and given that I don't want to remove packages, some of the
> packages that could be upgraded to newer versions won't be upgraded
> because otherwise things might be broken.  There's nothing I could do
> about that, or is there?

Look, you are over-complicating this and making it way more difficult
than it needs to be.

We all agree portage would be easier to use if it was less wordy, and if
it drew a better distinction between debug, info, error and warning
messages. But right now it's not there, so unless you can step up with a
high quality patch to improve matters, you have to deal with what is there.

Look at the output, take each thing portage is saying and eveluate it on
it's own merits. Maybe you need to do something, maybe not. But you have
to read them and decide.

Your question was should you always ignore such messages, and I forget
what the such was. Obviously, no, you must not globally ignore what
software is telling you.

So clam down, take a chill pill or whatever and deal with portage on
it's own terms

> 
>> You have a SLOT conflict and whether that prevents you from proceeding
>> or not doesn't change the fact that portage knows you have that conflict.
> 
> Is it possible to solve this conflict without removing packages?

NO. YOU DO NOT JUST REMOVE PACKAGES WILLY-NILLY.

Neil already explained what a slot conflict is. Portage wants to install
two versions from the same slot. Find out why and deal with that.
Oftentimes the message is a mere info, telling you why portage won't
install the latest. This is actually the same thing as yesterday's
question on nvidia-drivers that I already answered. You treat SLOTs and
packages the same way, a SLOT is just a subset of all versions of a
packages.

> 
>> In your specific case today, I believe portage will simply install the
>> lesser version and be done with it, but it will only do that when you
>> fix the USE issue (a whole separate issue)
> 
> Probably --- yet it tells me about conflicts, makes them appear to be
> important, and leaves me wondering how to solve them.

A conflict is just a conflict, doesn't have to be serius. Maybe portage
can solve it, maybe not. Either way, you get to read and understand the
output.

> 
>> [...]
>> The USE conflict for sure. Maybe the SLOT conflict but I think portage
>> will just deal with that one
>> [...]
>>> This one doesn't look very important, or does it?
>>
>> Chill dude, seriously. The sky is not about to fall on your head and the
>> bits on your disk are not going to miraculously re-arrange themselves
>> into Windows just because you can't do this update.
> 
> Sure, yet why make unimportant messages look important and important
> ones unimportant?

Because the devs are human. Ask them.

> 
>> Portage is what it is, deal with it.
>>
>> The portage team are all unpaid volunteers just liek everyone else and
>> none of us have any right at all to make demands of them. Especially not
>> you and I who are not active contribution solutions.
> 
> I know --- however, making a suggestion to improve the messages is a
> contribution.

But freaking out and complaining helps no-one.

You appear to not fully understand the nature of the problem and your
emotional outbursts are not helping. You keep going round the same
circle, complaining about how the output doesn't suit you, but I don;t
see evidence yet that you are actually reading it. You need to read it.

> 
>> [...]
>>> How about adding comments to such messages, like "You don't need to do
>>> anything to be able to proceed." and "You need to fix this before you
>>> could proceed."?
>>
>> If emerge exited then you need to fix something in your config.
>> If emerge does not exit then your config can be used as-is.
> 
> Messages more helpful could make it easier to figure out what needs to
> be fixed.

Learn python, submit a high-quality patch.

> 
>> [...]
>>> The last sync I did before the one yesterday wasn't the day before
>>> yesterday but over three months ago, so don't ask me today (or next
>>> weekend or whenever I give it another try) when that exactly was.  See
>>> what I mean?  Asking me to mask all packages to a certain point in time
>>> is like asking me to do much of the package management by myself.
>>
>> Exactly. You DO need to do the package management yourself. The Gentoo
>> devs provide useful tools in the form of portage and the tree with it's
>> ebuilds and eclasses, plus some amazing automation.
>>
>> But, are here's the bit where so many people move away from Gentoo:

So what? Gentoo is what it is. There are hundreds of Linux distros out
there. If some users are not prepared to do what it takes to run Gentoo,
and find something more suited to their needs then they should use that
and the Gentoo community will wish them well for the future.

>> You are required to do the management yourself, including most of the
>> thinking and all of the sweeping up of broken pieces. That's what you
>> signed up for when using Gentoo.
> 
> Perhaps not so many people would move away if the messages were
> improved.

Gentoo is not here to be your personal distro.

I think you might be happier with Arch, come to think of it.

> 
>> If you want to roll back the tree, then you need to implement a
>> solution that will let you do it as Gentoo does nto provide one. Git
>> now makes this easier.
> 
> Converting to btrfs might work for that, if I can boot from it.
> 
>> However, tree rollbacks are inadvisable for excellent technical reasons
>> - see if you can figure them out. Better to snapshot your entire system
>> and revert the snapshot if it goes south.
> 
> That's not even advisable with sources, though IIRC, the reasons for
> that might not apply here.  However, it's weird that a system like git
> makes it inadvisable to undo something, considering that being able to
> undo something very easily, is one important reason to invent and use
> such a system in the first place.

See below. You are considering the wrong problem.

> 
> Using snapshots for undoing things git is quite an application of
> overengineering.

The problem is not the tree. The problem is what you do with the tree,
and then desire to undo THAT. By far the most common reason to want to
rewind the tree is to have used it first. Emerging something usually
takes you past the point of no return.

p.s. Package management is hard. Really truly fucking annoyingly
frustratingly hard. And difficult to solve. That's why Windows doesn't
even try, MacOS shoves a walled garden down your throat, Debian thinks
their view must be perfect just because, and Red Hat charges lots of
money. Other teams try with varying success, giving us abominations like
npm.

Gentoo is one of the very few (perhaps only) distros that have the balls
to tackle this problem head on. Cut it some slack, please. Stop whinging.


-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com