Re: [gentoo-user] anti-portage wreckage?

["Andrey Gerasimenko" <gak@kaluga.ru>]

On Mon, 25 Dec 2006 04:52:55 +0300, Mike Myers <fluffymikey@gmail.com>  
wrote:

>                       In Gentoo, the system is updated while you are  
> using it.
> This causes us users to modify whatever we're running to suit all these
> changes.

As far as I know, Gentoo releases a Reference Platform twice a year. So,  
you can upgrade twice a year, once a year, once in two years - all as you  
please. It will be similar to other distros, but better.

>                      I'd rather be able to specify that I'm using like  
> the 2005
> profile, and then when I try to do emerge -u world, I don't have to deal
> with my applications going from one major version to another major  
> version
> all by themselves and then breaking with no easy way to revert back.

As discussed recently in another thread of this list, there are ways to  
get back easily, backup of the portage tree being one of them. However, I  
guess your problem can be solved easier - just do not do -u world. Since  
its goal is exactly to produce what you do not want, why should you? How  
many packages do you really want to be the latest? If there are a few, it  
is easy to update them individually; if there are many, you may create a  
virtual package in the overlay and update it.

I do not here much about upgrade really breaking a Gentoo installation. If  
it did, then a fresh install also would be broken, an extremely rare case  
with stable arch. Thus, if something does not work after upgrade, then  
configuration files are out of order. Gentoo already has everything  
necessary to examine them one by one and fix as necessary.

> Please tell me there's some solution to this?  I haven't seen one  
> mentioned
> anywhere yet.  Even with Gentoo's occasional problems, I like it too  
> much to
> use any other distro but I'd definitely like to see better version
> management than what its got, which is none.

As far as I understand, no, there is no solution. If you upgrade any  
software, you have to upgrade the dependencies and configuration. All that  
can be offered, and is offered by many distros, is the upgrade option that  
should work if you installed the distro and did not change anything. Even  
that does not work pretty often, please read the reviews. For a Gentoo  
user the reason is evident - they do not have dispatch-conf. Some vendors  
have already stopped bragging that an upgrade does not break anything,  
example - Vista.

-- 
Andrei Gerasimenko
-- 
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