On Fri, 13 May 2005 06:24:06 -0700, Mark Knecht wrote: > > For example. You emerge someprog, which has a dependency for somelib, > > so emerge install both packages but only adds someprog to world. Then > > you decide that you don't want someprog so you unmerge it, but > > somelib is still there, even though nothing else requires it. > > Normally, emerge depclean -p will show that somelib needs to be > > removed, but emerging updates the way you suggest could result in it > > being in your world file, so it will be considered as necessary to > > your system, even though the only function it now fulfils is taking > > up hard disk space (and possibly providing a security risk). > > OK, using disk space I understand. Even taking up time and making > emerge world longer I understand. How an unused library causes a > possible security risk is beyond me but I'll accept it's a possibility > for the sake of making forward progress.
In the case of a library, it is unlikely, but not all dependencies are libraries. That was only a made up example. If you want a, fairly extreme, real world example, consider a KDE user merging meld, which will pull in 20+ GNOME-related dependencies. > I'm not disagreeing with you. I'm just faced with what's happening > this morning. emerge world had 6 things it wanted to update. One of > them (MythTV) is running right now. Running emerge world would result > in MythTV files being changed while the program is operating. I don't > think that seems like a safe thing to do so I don't want that one. I > emerge the other 5 by hand. So use --oneshot (or -1) and avoid any future problems. These are upgrades, so anything that needs to be in world is already there. > Granted, I think about your point as I do so. I'm not overly bothered > by the disk space issue, or even to a great extent the time to compile > issue. The basis of your argument is that I'm installing and > uninstalling apps which doesn't happen much here. Stuff goes on, it > doesn't much come off. You're experimenting with mythtv, which has a large number of dependencies. What if you'd decided it wasn't for you? > If I use only emerge world then I have to wait until the machine is > idle and unneeded for long periods of time. I cannot know that with > any certainty when the machine is 400 miles away... I wasn't suggesting that you should not merge individual packages, only that you do it in a way that doesn't screw up your world file. The --oneshot option is provided for a reason. > Mea culpa. If I'd known that someone considered it bad practice I most > likely wouldn't have. In this case I do (personally) still think it's > about choice. I've never run emerge --depclean. The warnings are too > severe. The man page is too scary. I won't touch it so I would imagine > there are others like me too. The main problem with depclean was when your USE flags had changed since installing affected packages. The --newuse option to emerge has dealt with that problem, which is why the depclean warnings now say to run emerge --newuse first. > > The world file is a powerful concept in portage, if used correctly,. > > Filling it up with a list of all installed packages completely negates > > its usefulness. > Completely negates? No, not hardly. Reduces? Most possibly, but I do > not see a way to update my machines otherwise. There is already a list of all installed packages in /var/db/pkg. What the world file adds is the ability to distinguish between those you want installed and those that were installed as dependencies of something else. -- Neil Bothwick If Satan ever loses his hair, there'll be hell toupee.
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