eix-sync vs emerge --sync

[Troopo]

Hi,

Just curious, although eix-sync actually uses emerge --sync under the hood i can't say i saw a lot of people saying that it's what they are using.
Instead i think the majority uses emerge --sync

I was wondering why is that, if eix actually takes care of everything and eix-update is also widely used along with emerge --sync anyway.

[szatox]

Gentoo and portage are pretty much the same thing. I know there are other package managers (and I have built Gentoo images without any package manager inside), but they are the exception rather than the rule. The rule is "there is no Gentoo without emerge"
Eix is just search helper. A convenience tool that merely speeds up execution of your query. And it's not even installed by default - unlike emerge.

So we rely on emerge being there, while relying on eix being there would confuse all the newbies who haven't installed it yet. And then you have to emerge that new package anyway, and you have to sync for the first time before you can install eix, so just use that damn emerge --sync directly instead of inventing fancy ways to invoke the same thing.
This my reason behind your observation.

Also, yeah, I think eix --sync uses emerge --sync followed by eix-update.
You can call eix-update manually after emerge --sync. It will regenerate metadata used for fast searches. There is no need to eix --sync ever. That's - again - a convenience option which replaces 2 commands with a single one and performs repeatable steps automatically.

[Ionen]

Reminder there's also /etc/portage/postsync.d/ that can be used. I personally prefer have eix handled there (along with my other postsync scripts) and use normal sync commands.

I believe eix-sync heralds from a time that directory wasn't an option and is still used today anyway (not like it matters )

[miket]

One more consideration. I share a single Portage tree via either bind mounts (when on the same host as the tree) or NFS mounts. That means that a single emerge --sync does it for all the machines on the network. I don't try to share an eix database, though. That means I do eix --update in multiple places after doing the single emerge --sync.

[dmpogo]

[mv]

[Troopo]

So i see most of you would prefer running 2 or 3 commands instead of 1, this is interesting.
Although it's true portage is built in while eix needs to get emerged first, no real reason using several commands unless you want that separation for better control or some complicated situation.
I don't know maybe i'm just a lazy programmer but after you know what you are doing running a single command or shortcut makes more sense.

[mv]

[szatox]

[Tony0945]

[Troopo]

[Corbit]

Isn't emaint sync --allrepos the new emerge --sync?

[szatox]

Oh, it's really simple, I'm just a freakin' genius
And seriously now, my systems have matured over time, so there is little need to search for new stuff. My toys reached the point, where that stuff just works, and I'm busy with other (real-life) things than intentionally breaking them. Not breaking my stuff intentionally greatly reduces total time spent maintaining said stuff. Upgrade once every 2 weeks is good enough.

I inspect USE flags during updates with good, old emerge -avuND @world. Emerge resolves dependencies, shows me the plan, I accept it and leave for other things.
Failures and blockers don't happen very often, and wen they do, masking one package (or updating it explicitly with emerge -1 <package> ) usually helps.
And emerge is kind enough to tell you exactly where the immediate problem is.

[Ionen]

[dmpogo]

[ian.au]

[Tony0945]

[dmpogo]