Hi there,
I recently got bitten by the libexpat.so.0 error - for me I
discovered this some considerable months after everyone else on the
list, not because I don't update often (perhaps once or twice every
few weeks) but, I think, because my machines are servers and I don't
have that many packages installed.
During the LONG process of resolving this I discovered the command
`eix -Iu` and that running this with the --only-names flag would give
me a text list of all the files on the system which aren't at the
latest version.
First question: is 'emerge -1 `eix -Iu --only-names`' a useful
command for updating packages not in the world file? Or is this usage
of mine to be avoided? It just seems more effective than `emerge -D
world` - that seems to miss many packages.
I am aware that the above command may update packages I don't
actually need on the system, however it is less arduous to remove
(`emerge -C`) those afterwards, having checked what depends upon them
& stuff. I would rather have some unneeded packages on my system than
some obsolete ones which will cause problems in the future.
So today I ran 'emerge -1 `eix -Iu --only-names`' in order to test
the "new" elog -> email functionality - I had read mention of this in
the past, but the discussion of it in the "idea on updates" thread
made me think to try it. BTW: there is no /usr/share/portage/config/
make.conf.example on my system - it is at /etc/make.conf.example
instead. Is this a problem?
Anyway, I was reminded today that a side-effect of this command is
that it (re)emerges the latest version of any package for which there
is also an older slotted-version on the system. So it here it keeps
updating Python.
$ eix -I python$
[U] dev-lang/python
Available versions:
(2.4) 2.4.4-r5 2.4.4-r6 2.4.4-r14
(2.5) 2.5.2-r6 ~2.5.2-r7
{+cxx +threads berkdb bootstrap build doc elibc_uclibc
examples gdbm ipv6 ncurses nocxx nothreads readline sqlite ssl tk
ucs2 wininst}
Installed versions: 2.4.4-r9(2.4)(20:32:42 05/04/08)(berkdb
examples gdbm ncurses readline ssl -bootstrap -build -doc -
elibc_uclibc -ipv6 -nocxx -nothreads -tk -ucs2)
2.5.2-r6(2.5)(03:46:36 08/30/08)(berkdb
doc examples gdbm ncurses readline ssl threads -bootstrap -build -
elibc_uclibc -ipv6 -sqlite -tk -ucs2 -wininst)
Homepage: http://www.python.org/
Description: Python is an interpreted, interactive,
object-oriented programming language.
$ sudo python-updater
Password:
* Starting Python Updater from 2.4 to 2.5 :
* No packages needs to be remerged.
$
So second question is, can python-2.4.4-r9 be safely removed from the
system?
I don't tend to keep up with best practices in Gentoo, so any
criticism or advice would be much appreciated.
Stroller.
