On Thu, Aug 4, 2011 at 3:00 AM, Joost Roeleveld <jo...@antarean.org> wrote:
> On Thursday, August 04, 2011 12:10:25 AM Alan McKinnon wrote: > > On Wed 03 August 2011 17:44:08 Willie Wong did opine thusly: > > > On Sun, Jul 31, 2011 at 01:38:58PM +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote: > > > > It's sensible really - portage is not the only package manager > > > > out there and therefore should not be in @system. The user did > > > > not put portage in world, and did not use -D, so portage is not > > > > updating the package. > > > > > > > > The solution is simple - all users should put their preferred > > > > package manager into world and what Stroller is seeing will > > > > stop happening. > > > > > > > > Zac can't force portage into system like he could with less and > > > > nano and have few or non side-effects. A virtual package > > > > manager only says that you *have* one, not *which* one. So as > > > > usual for Gentoo, the user gets to tell the software which one > > > > it is. > > > > > > > > I don't see a problem. > > > > > > Though it is silly IMHO that portage would want to remove itself > > > with depclean. Could it not be hardcoded into portage that it > > > should try to keep itself updated and not commit suicide? > > > (Independently of the @system sets.) > > > > What about replacing portage with paludis? In your scenario, portage > > could not do that. > > It would be possible by: > 1) emerge paludiis > 2) paludis - delete portage (I don't know Paludis, so not sure of the exact > syntax) > > This would then be a safer way of doing things as you'd always have at > least 1 > package manager installed. > > -- > Joost > > Having something delete/remove itself is always a tricky situation. But in this context it should be possible. Though package managers are extremely useful, they are not mandatory and in some (rare) cases one may not be wanted and there must be a way to appease these environments in such a situation. We're talking about GNU/Linux here, the possible uses are enormous, so the user just needs to understand what they're doing and know which packages are vital in their system to make sure it continues to operate as expected.
