Portage no trashing system + package holding

hdcool · n00b Joined: 17 Apr 2002 Posts: 2

root@darkmatter hdcool # emerge --pretend --update world

These are the packages that I would merge, in order.

Calculating world dependencies ...done!
[ebuild U ] sys-apps/portage-1.9.1 to /
[ebuild U ] sys-devel/gettext-0.11.1-r1 to /

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Now I'm a guy that likes stability prior than bleeding edge, so what
i would like is to see a date when the package is comitted. So, if I
want to update world and I see that for instance glibc is freshly committed, that won't upgrade it yet...i want to have it tested first.

root@darkmatter hdcool # emerge --pretend --update world

These are the packages that I would merge, in order.

Calculating world dependencies ...done!
[ebuild U ] [ C:16/04/02] sys-apps/portage-1.9.1 to /
[ebuild U ] [ C:16/04/02] sys-devel/gettext-0.11.1-r1 to /

Which brings me to my second point: I might want to update packages, but not all of them so I should be able to put packages on
hold and let them upgrade later. "Oh, it's been a week since glibc is comitted and no problems have arised, let's download it"

example could be then: "emerge --update world --pretend --hold="portage-1.9.1, ..."

Calculating world dependencies ...done!
[ebuild H ] [ C:16/04/02] sys-apps/portage-1.9.1 to /
[ebuild U ] [ C:16/04/02] sys-devel/gettext-0.11.1-r1 to /

then about the no trashing system:

I want to install Gabber for example, however, this has 2 other dependencies, which will be automatically installed then...yet one day,
twisty as my mind is sometimes, i decide i don't want gabber anymore
and let's assume those two additional installed gabber dependencies are not used by anything else anymore, they leave on the system...
slowly trashing up the harddisk(ofcourse...people have big harddisks, but I'm thinking of the principe..)
This could be achieved easily with let's say, let every package have it's own two textual databases called for instance: package.used_by and package.deps

I install gabber and in gabbers package.deps gets written those two dependencies...in the two depency files their database package.used_by their is added gabber.
Now i do: emerge unmerge gabber and emerge looks in the dependency database of gabber and sees, "Oh, it uses that dependency, let's see if it still used". If the depency package.used_by file contains only gabber, then that package can be unmerged too, otherwise it will stay on the system, yet gabber will be removed from it's package.used_by database.

Also this could let users see which files are very important and should not be deleted just like that

Do you understand?

If not, i can understand, read it a couple times
and if you really really don't get it but still think it is interesting, feel
free to contact me.

Kind regards
_________________
hdcool :p
http://asl.to/hdcool

freefall · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 13 Apr 2002 Posts: 89

I know exactly what you mean regarding all these deps that gets installed and never removed. It bugged me in FreeBSD and it bugged me in Debian. Finally someone else who thinks this is something that a packaging system should be able to handle. As you say, hd's are big today but it's still annoying.

I have mentioned this on various forums in the past, but most people seem to think that it's a non-issue. It's the installation of deps that are important not the removal of them, right?

I have nothing more than superficial knowledge about FreeBSD ports or apt-get, but I don't think neither of them can remove "orphaned" deps. I was surprised when I realised that portage doesn't have this ability either. Or has it? It would be nice if it has.

When I installed Galeon in FreeBSD I counted how many packages would be installed. 49 would be installed. If I uninstall Galeon 48 of them would remain on my system. For a semi control freak like myself this is very annoying. As I mentioned above, I don't know much about the FreeBSD ports system or Debian's apt-get. Is it possible to remove orphaned deps in FreeBSD or Debian?

Your solution sounds fine to me. That's more or less exactly what I have been thinking.

hdcool · n00b Joined: 17 Apr 2002 Posts: 2

Well i got good news for both of us

Seemant(a dev i know from #gentoo) told me the holding system
is getting worked on, and the no-trashing-system should be available in portage2
_________________
hdcool :p
http://asl.to/hdcool

klieber · Posted: Wed Apr 17, 2002 7:58 pm Post subject:

freefall · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 13 Apr 2002 Posts: 89

freefall · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 13 Apr 2002 Posts: 89