On Wed, 2006-04-26 at 14:24 -0400, Kevin wrote: > And unless I'm way off-base, the version-difference-threshold notion > described above is not implemented in portage now. Someone please > correct me if I'm wrong.
You're off-base. See, you can, for example, mask all revisions within the same version of a package in your /etc/portage/package.mask file quite easily. So you *could* have xemacs, using your own example, only ask to upgrade once the stable version in the tree went over a certain threshold. > Well your comment is certainly true in the most extreme interpretation, > but the same thing can be accurately said about whether or not one > should assume that the sun is going to rise tomorrow or that the > universe won't disappear in a quantum fluctuation while you're sleeping, > but IMO, such extreme statements have little value in day-to-day > application. Everyone must make some assumptions about nearly > everything or it becomes nearly impossible to function. I make all > kinds of assumptions in administering computers and they almost always > make my life much, MUCH easier than it would be without the assumptions. I'm sorry, but do your friends call you Duncan? I'll leave it at that. > Sometimes they bite me, but only rarely. The key to success here is > having the judgment to know what is relatively safe to make assumptions > about and what is not. Judgment is something that only a human can > provide... not a computer. This is why I want greater and more granular > control over upgrading packages in Gentoo. Aside from the points you > make above (and I may be missing some other features currently present > in Gentoo), my choices now are, in the grossest terms: upgrade every > package by hand, one at a time, while sitting in front of the computer > (which is very close to what I spent last weekend doing) or do an emerge > world and hope for the best. IMO, that's not much control and does not > allow for the application of judgment except in the former option (which > is very, very time consuming). You missed the ability to lock down to specific package versions, which is already a 100% possibility with current portage. You can lock down the versions to *anything that you want* via package.mask and package.unmask, then simply have your system run an "emerge --update --deep world" to automatically upgrade any and all packages not listed in your mask files. > What I really want is to make the process of maintaining Gentoo boxes > over the long term easier (IOW: less time-consuming) than is now true, > by adding some functionality that AFAICT does not now exist which would > allow me to automate some things, turn off automation of other things, > and as the sysadmin, have control over what those things should be. In > my mind at least, the central theme in Gentoo of choice dovetails nicely > with what I'm trying to describe here: control and choice that is highly > fine-tunable by the owner of the box in regards to package upgrades. Yup. It's called /etc/portage and we've had it for a while. You simply seem to be missing its flexibility. > I'm not a member of the portage-devel mailing list so I'm going to drop > this now. If someone here is a member of both, then please feel free to > cross-post this thread to whatever forum is most appropriate for it. > After spending 30-45 minutes trying to help improve Gentoo by posting a > new (AFAICT) idea in bugzilla and again here, I feel like I've done > enough. IMHO, this is an idea that would add great value to Gentoo and > I can't help but think that many sysadmins who must maintain many boxes > would agree, but I have no particular attachment to the idea that would > make me want to go around every mailing list under the sun trumpeting my > idea to anyone who will listen. I'm just posting an idea that seemed > like a good one to me. The devs may take it or leave it as they see fit. Yep. It was such a good idea that the portage team implemented it quite some time ago. *grin* -- Chris Gianelloni Release Engineering - Strategic Lead x86 Architecture Team Games - Developer Gentoo Linux
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