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List:       gentoo-user
Subject:    Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Emerge
From:       Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon () gmail ! com>
Date:       2016-04-16 19:47:15
Message-ID: 571296C3.10908 () gmail ! com
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On 16/04/2016 18:58,  »Q « wrote:
> On Sat, 16 Apr 2016 12:41:37 -0400
> Alan Grimes <ALONZOTG@verizon.net> wrote:
> 
>> I've got more years on gentoo that most of you.
> 
> I wonder how you determined that, but it doesn't matter;  it's the
> content of posts that reveal cluelessness quotient, not a clock.
> 
>> I only joined this list a few months ago because emerge was starting
>> to cause problems
> 
> You joined the wrong list -- this one's for helping each other.
> Unfortunately, I don't know what is the right list for informing the
> world that portage is malicious and out to get you.
> 
>> I am speaking from many years of experience with weekly updates when I
>> tell you that ubuntu-style "update everything while I go play Space
>> Invaders" (Or Kerbal Space Program) absolutely does work unless emerge
>> decides to get stupid and look for excuses not to do what you asked it
>> to.
> 
> That's funny, IME portage is better at automagically resolving blockers
> than it ever was in the past.  Then again, I don't know how it was
> before 2001.

Oh gawd it was awful. You'd get a message saying two things blocked and
it was up to you to unblock them yourself.

But, things in computing were simpler in those days. Disks were IDE or
SCSI, a desktop was just X11 plus a bunch of apps, some of them aware of
each other. Hotplugging sort of worked but not really for external disks
(if you even had one that is). All of /dev was static and we had MAKEDEV
- it created one of everything you'd ever need and if not, well there
was mknod

And the most complex thing portage had to deal with was virtuals.
I don't think even SLOTs were around then.

Nowadays things are so different, out hardware is vastly more complex,
so is the software and portage has to keep up. Here's something
important to consider:

The most complex calculation most of us ever ask our computers to do is
what portage needs to figure out for emerge -avuND world

Like Dale correctly keeps pointing out, this isn't Ubuntu which only
gives you one choice - the one the package maintainer made. Gentoo is
unique in that it has to cope[1] with any choice the user decided to
make, and still get the answer right. Even my fleet of FreeBSD servers
doesn't offer that choice - I can compile from ports, but a port only
has one version and each has a poor replacement for USE.


[1] in truth, it's the devs who have to cope with that. They need to get
a reasonably good idea of what will work with set and set the blockers
accordingly. Portage only follows their hints. So thumbs up to our devs!


> 
> (Sorry, everyone.  I'll try to quit feeding it, I promise.)
> 
> 


-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com


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