On 30 Aug 2008, at 13:56, Alan McKinnon wrote:
The main reason these packages are behind at all is that they are
usually
build dependencies, not run dependencies. They will only be updated
with
emerge -uD when something that depends on them is rebuilt.
To avoid this, use 'emerge --with-bdeps y'
This has the side effect of knowing what to do with SLOTs
So a periodic 'emerge --with-bdeps world' would be worthwhile?
In general I find that emerge is infinitely better at knowing how
to get what
I want than I am, so it's always best to let it do what it wants to do
I'd really debate this premise. Perhaps the problem is not with
`emerge` itself, perhaps with the ebuilds or with simple versioning
incompatibilities, but the number of cock-ups one sees with emerged
packages... well, I think "infinitely" good is stretching it just a
little.
I'm not saying Portage is poor - other package managers have given me
more headaches per usage. Maybe the problem is with build-time
dependencies of the build-time dependencies, I don't know, but when I
had the libexpat.so.0 error the only thing that worked (having
followed a number of different advices posted here) was to rebuild
EVERY outdated package on my system - a total numbering in the region
of 250. I wouldn't have imagined I had so many packages installed,
never mind those "missed" by my regular updates.
Stroller.
