[gentoo-user] Coping with KDE upgrades

[gentoo-user] Coping with KDE upgrades

[Kevin O'Gorman]

I converted to KDE modular some time ago with considerable trepidation.
Now I'm faced with the updates that came out this week, and I'd like to take
advantage of the opportunity this offers to dispense with (that is, unmerge)
the many parts of KDE I will never use.

The problem is obvious and unavoidable: there are 231 parts that
currently are in my world file, and I do not know what all of them
do.  I can cherry-pick a few that are obvious throw-aways by removing
them from world, and waiting to see if they get updated anyway because
they're actually needed.

Does anybody have advice about how to improve that process?  Would it
be better to remove all but the obvious keepers?

I'm not looking forward to the pains-taking process of vetting each and
every one of the 231, but I don't want to be spending the time to recompile
the presumed multitude that I never ever use.

-- 
Kevin O'Gorman, PhD
-- 
gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-user] Coping with KDE upgrades

[Boyd Stephen Smith Jr.]

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On Sunday 19 November 2006 12:52, "Kevin O'Gorman" <kogorman@gmail.com> 
wrote about '[gentoo-user] Coping with KDE upgrades':
> I converted to KDE modular some time ago with considerable trepidation.
> Now I'm faced with the updates that came out this week, and I'd like to
> take advantage of the opportunity this offers to dispense with (that is,
> unmerge) the many parts of KDE I will never use.

I'm there with you.

> The problem is obvious and unavoidable: there are 231 parts that
> currently are in my world file, and I do not know what all of them
> do.  I can cherry-pick a few that are obvious throw-aways by removing
> them from world, and waiting to see if they get updated anyway because
> they're actually needed.

The only package that was in my world file was kde-meta.  That brings in 
everything.  How did you get 213 entries anyway?  Forgetting to use -1 
(--oneshot) as needed?

> Does anybody have advice about how to improve that process?  Would it
> be better to remove all but the obvious keepers?

The way I'm slimming things down, I removed kde-meta from world, and then 
did emerge -p --depclean.  I look over the (*LONG*) list and when I see an 
application I use, I add it to my world file with emerge -n.  After I'm 
fairly sure I've caught everything I'll let the depclean actually remove 
packages.

> I'm not looking forward to the pains-taking process of vetting each and
> every one of the 231, but I don't want to be spending the time to
> recompile the presumed multitude that I never ever use.

Unfortunately I still have a long list of packages to "confirm" that I 
don't use before unmerging.  An "advantage" to my situtation is that I 
still have all of kde, but updates are only applied to things that are 
depended upon by my world file.

You'll have to do some manual work, but you can always build binary 
packages of anything before unmerging it so that re-merging it is quite 
sort.  grep-ing your process list for package names (or vice-versa) can 
easily confirm packages as used.  Also, if your filesystem keeps track of 
atimes, you can probably use those to help make decisions.

I'm not sure I *directly* addressed your questions, but HTH.

-- 
"If there's one thing we've established over the years,
it's that the vast majority of our users don't have the slightest
clue what's best for them in terms of package stability."
-- Gentoo Developer Ciaran McCreesh

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Re: [gentoo-user] Coping with KDE upgrades

[Richard Fish]

On 11/19/06, Boyd Stephen Smith Jr. <bss03@volumehost.net> wrote:
> The way I'm slimming things down, I removed kde-meta from world, and then
> did emerge -p --depclean.  I look over the (*LONG*) list and when I see an
> application I use, I add it to my world file with emerge -n.  After I'm
> fairly sure I've caught everything I'll let the depclean actually remove
> packages.

This is pretty much the sanest way of doing this I think.  Just remove
all kde-base stuff from world, use --depclean --pretend to see what
wants to be removed, and add things back in with the --noreplace
option.

The only thing I would caution on are the artsplugin-foo packages,
particularly artsplugin-xine, artsplugin-audiofile, and
artsplugin-akode.  Removing these can have some strange effects on
kde, like refusing to play certain media files.

-Richard
-- 
gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-user] Coping with KDE upgrades

[Boyd Stephen Smith Jr.]

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On Sunday 19 November 2006 16:25, Philip Webb <purslow@sympatico.ca> wrote 
about 'Re: [gentoo-user] Coping with KDE upgrades':
> 061119 Kevin O'Gorman wrote:
> > Now I'm faced with the updates that came out this week
> > and I'd like to unmerge the many parts of KDE I will never use.
> > Would it be better to remove all but the obvious keepers?
>
> You need  3  things :
>
>   kdelibs

This doesn't have to be in your world file because it will be pulled in as 
a dependency of applications that require those libraries.

>   kdebase-startkde (which emerges  16  other pkgs first)

Yes, this is a really easy one to miss, but it provides some fairly 
essential scripts.  It's certainly possible to run "KDE" without it, by 
writing your own scripts, but that's almost getting to the point where 
your are running KDE application in your own custom desktop environment.

Of course, it's fairly arbitrary where the line is between just running KDE 
applications and running "KDE".  Certainly you are running "KDE" if you 
are running it as defined by upstream (kdelibs, kdebase, kdegames, kdepim, 
etc.; the whole #!) which is achieved in Gentoo by emerging kde-meta 
(modular) or kde (monolithic).  Also, I doubt anyone would say you are 
running KDE if you have amaroK in your Gnome session, even if you are 
using kwin as your window manager.  There's a lot of middle ground though.

> So start by unmerging everything, then merge 3.5.5 as above.

No need to unmerge first. 1) edit your world file, 2) emerge -n anything 
want to keep, 3) emerge -a --depclean.

-- 
"If there's one thing we've established over the years,
it's that the vast majority of our users don't have the slightest
clue what's best for them in terms of package stability."
-- Gentoo Developer Ciaran McCreesh

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