From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org ([208.92.234.80] helo=lists.gentoo.org) by finch.gentoo.org with esmtp (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1S7Aom-0007ar-22 for garchives@archives.gentoo.org; Mon, 12 Mar 2012 19:22:04 +0000 Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 8A518E0DE6; Mon, 12 Mar 2012 19:21:45 +0000 (UTC) Received: from smtp.gentoo.org (smtp.gentoo.org [140.211.166.183]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5028CE0C3F for ; Mon, 12 Mar 2012 19:19:40 +0000 (UTC) Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by smtp.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id BAE111B4085 for ; Mon, 12 Mar 2012 19:19:39 +0000 (UTC) X-Virus-Scanned: by amavisd-new using ClamAV at gentoo.org X-Spam-Flag: NO X-Spam-Score: -1.01 X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.01 tagged_above=-999 required=5.5 tests=[BAYES_00=-1.9, DKIM_ADSP_CUSTOM_MED=0.001, FREEMAIL_FROM=0.001, NML_ADSP_CUSTOM_MED=0.9, SPF_HELO_PASS=-0.001, SPF_PASS=-0.001, T_RP_MATCHES_RCVD=-0.01] autolearn=no Received: from smtp.gentoo.org ([127.0.0.1]) by localhost (smtp.gentoo.org [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10024) with ESMTP id mZoO_zO9bBCr for ; Mon, 12 Mar 2012 19:19:33 +0000 (UTC) Received: from plane.gmane.org (plane.gmane.org [80.91.229.3]) (using TLSv1 with cipher AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by smtp.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 3C75D1B4057 for ; Mon, 12 Mar 2012 19:19:32 +0000 (UTC) Received: from list by plane.gmane.org with local (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1S7AmH-0004QG-Ky for gentoo-user@gentoo.org; Mon, 12 Mar 2012 20:19:29 +0100 Received: from athedsl-352089.home.otenet.gr ([85.72.230.247]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Mon, 12 Mar 2012 20:19:29 +0100 Received: from realnc by athedsl-352089.home.otenet.gr with local (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Mon, 12 Mar 2012 20:19:29 +0100 X-Injected-Via-Gmane: http://gmane.org/ To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org From: Nikos Chantziaras Subject: [gentoo-user] Re: virtual/shadow Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2012 21:19:12 +0200 Organization: Lucas Barks Message-ID: References: <1669924605.604523.1331575521916.JavaMail.open-xchange@email.1and1.com> 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: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org X-Gmane-NNTP-Posting-Host: athedsl-352089.home.otenet.gr User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:10.0.1) Gecko/20120302 Thunderbird/10.0.1 In-Reply-To: <1669924605.604523.1331575521916.JavaMail.open-xchange@email.1and1.com> X-Archives-Salt: 1ceaca44-c483-4fbd-b812-4f7145f332dd X-Archives-Hash: e890b4f8300baea9086389c4d89ff209 On 12/03/12 20:05, Bruce Hill, Jr. wrote: > These virtual apps are irritating me, and the fanboi answers in #gentoo > are worse. > > What is the purpose of virtual/shadow and why would I want it? Paul's answers covers it, but I'll give an explanation that is the reverse of a fanboi answer. The reason we need virtuals is because of a shortcoming in portage: lack of "provides" functionality. RPM packages can tell the package manager what they provide. For example, RPMs for libav and ffmpeg can both use "ffmpeg" as their "provides" field. Portage can't do that, so it needs a new "virtual/ffmpeg" package instead.