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botinok
n00b
Joined: 29 Jun 2015
Posts: 6
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 Posted: Wed Feb 07, 2024 11:37 am Post subject: Why older ebuilds are removed so quickly? |
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Hello everyone. Maybe this subject had arisen before. If so, could you pinpoint me, where can I find the answers.
I've been using Gentoo for more than a decade. A couple years ago I've noticed that packages have fewer versions. I didn't pay attention to this till I needed to rollback and discovered that it's quite hard to do.
Nowadays in order to rollback a package I have to:
- fetch the gentoo git repo (now I always have a local copy)
- find the right commit
- checkout it
- copy the ebuild to my local repo
- update the ebuild
- update manifest
- install the version I needed
This applies to almost every package, bc they have only version - the "latest" one.
WHAT THE HELL?
Why old versions of ebuilds are removed so quickly? Is Gentoo Foundation short on disk space? |
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fedeliallalinea
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Joined: 08 Mar 2003
Posts: 31266
Location: here
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| Posted: Wed Feb 07, 2024 12:14 pm Post subject: |
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The removal of a version can depend on many factors, open bugs, inability to compile them with new libraries,...
If then the new version is a minor version it is useless to keep a history.
Specifically what package are you talking about?
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Questions are guaranteed in life; Answers aren't. |
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logrusx
Advocate
Joined: 22 Feb 2018
Posts: 2418
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| Posted: Wed Feb 07, 2024 12:52 pm Post subject: |
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Well, Gentoo is a live distribution. Part of being live is being unable to maintain dead parts. Some things are just frozen in time, other develop slower than the more fundamental and major parts of the system and slowly fall out of compatibility with those fundamental, major or critical parts of the system that cannot stay outdated due to bugs, security issues and so on. You can't have it all, but you can use tools like flatpak. There's another one of that kind too but I don't remember its name as I don't use those.
If you go to github, navigate to the package of interest, you can see the commit history of only this package of category if you will and see the commit message. It may contain a bug reference or directly explain why it's being removed.
Needing to use an older version might indicate an underlying issue with the usage of that ebuild. Please state one or more packages you encountered this difficulty with and why you wanted the old version. There might be a better solution to your problem.
Your procedure to get the older ebuilds seems a bit convoluted too.
And last but not least, sometimes live distributions might not be suitable for your needs.
Maybe say some more words what your needs are, so you can get better advice, even if that means something like "Use Arch/Ubuntu/whatever Linux". It might be better for you.
Best Regards,
Georgi |
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mrbassie
l33t
Joined: 31 May 2013
Posts: 821
Location: Go past the sign for cope, right at the sign for seethe. If you see the target you've missed it.
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| Posted: Wed Feb 07, 2024 5:36 pm Post subject: |
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I'm assuming no such thing exists but an ebuild+distfile archive would be a cool toy.
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I spent a christmas in Vienna twenty something years ago. It was a beautiful city. Everyone was so friendly. |
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Hu
Administrator
Joined: 06 Mar 2007
Posts: 22648
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| Posted: Wed Feb 07, 2024 5:53 pm Post subject: |
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| The Gentoo git tree provides the ebuild archive. Some forum members, such as Neddy, have large and publicly reachable unofficial archives of distfiles. I'm not aware of a single project that aims to provide both, nor whether the existing ones are exhaustive. |
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sam_
Developer
Joined: 14 Aug 2020
Posts: 1961
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| Posted: Wed Feb 07, 2024 9:06 pm Post subject: |
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Not going to respond to the original post given its tone.
| Hu wrote: | | The Gentoo git tree provides the ebuild archive. Some forum members, such as Neddy, have large and publicly reachable unofficial archives of distfiles. I'm not aware of a single project that aims to provide both, nor whether the existing ones are exhaustive. |
See bug 834712. We recently got funding approved for it. |
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Juippisi
Developer
Joined: 30 Sep 2005
Posts: 751
Location: /home
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| Posted: Thu Feb 08, 2024 8:06 am Post subject: Re: Why older ebuilds are removed so quickly? |
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| botinok wrote: | Hello everyone. Maybe this subject had arisen before. If so, could you pinpoint me, where can I find the answers.
I've been using Gentoo for more than a decade. A couple years ago I've noticed that packages have fewer versions. |
It mostly comes down to 2 things: pkgcheck being adapted to dev workflows, and Gentoo's tinderboxing efforts.
| botinok wrote: |
I didn't pay attention to this till I needed to rollback and discovered that it's quite hard to do.
Nowadays in order to rollback a package I have to:
- fetch the gentoo git repo (now I always have a local copy)
- find the right commit
- checkout it
- copy the ebuild to my local repo
- update the ebuild
- update manifest
- install the version I needed
This applies to almost every package, bc they have only version - the "latest" one. |
Just browse the web UI, wget (old) ebuild, manifest and emerge. Throwing this out there for everybody: https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Downgrading_a_package_to_removed_version
Anyway do you have some specific packages that often break for you? Since nowadays the packages are tested thoroughly, everything should work better. Remember to report bugs on latest versions so maintainers know to leave the older ones around for longer time. |
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botinok
n00b
Joined: 29 Jun 2015
Posts: 6
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| Posted: Thu Feb 08, 2024 1:25 pm Post subject: Re: Why older ebuilds are removed so quickly? |
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Thanks everyone for your responses.
I'm not going to describe problems of specific packages. I have workarounds.
| Juippisi wrote: |
Just browse the web UI, wget (old) ebuild, manifest and emerge. |
I didn't even consider that gitweb UI can be useful. Thanks.
I'm not gonna whine anymore so we can close the topic.
Regards. |
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rcarz
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Joined: 01 Nov 2018
Posts: 8
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| Posted: Tue Sep 03, 2024 7:21 pm Post subject: |
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I'll whine. KDE 6 packages were marked stable for amd64 three days ago. kde-apps/spectacle:5 was removed from the tree two days later. I need to be able to install one-off packages without doing a world update first.
I recently spent several hours doing a world update piecemeal because KDE, Qt, and Python upgrades were causing a ton of circular blockers. Some of those blockers were fixed by pulling an older portage snapshot with removed ebuilds so emerge could rebuild dependencies in place. That particular machine has my original Gentoo installation from 2004 that I've kept updated (and moves to newer machines as I replace hardware). This is a new-ish problem.
| logrusx wrote: | And last but not least, sometimes live distributions might not be suitable for your needs.
Maybe say some more words what your needs are, so you can get better advice, even if that means something like "Use Arch/Ubuntu/whatever Linux". It might be better for you. |
Maintaining a Gentoo system has historically never required frequent upgrades. Aggressive pruning of the tree has only been a noticeable hassle in the last few years. |
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flexibeast
Guru
Joined: 04 Apr 2022
Posts: 449
Location: Naarm/Melbourne, Australia
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| Posted: Wed Sep 04, 2024 12:57 am Post subject: |
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Is there a Policy on this? If not, could there be? For example - and i'm just spitballing here - "At least one previous ebuild must be retained, unless this cannot be done for technical reasons (such as a particular hard dependency no longer being available in-tree)."
i've only been bitten by this issue a couple of times since starting to use Gentoo a few years ago - i can't remember the specifics now - but yeah, it's been frustrating given that there didn't seem to be a compelling reason for a previous ebuild to have been removed. |
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sam_
Developer
Joined: 14 Aug 2020
Posts: 1961
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| Posted: Wed Sep 04, 2024 1:37 am Post subject: |
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| rcarz wrote: | I'll whine. KDE 6 packages were marked stable for amd64 three days ago. kde-apps/spectacle:5 was removed from the tree two days later. I need to be able to install one-off packages without doing a world update first.
I recently spent several hours doing a world update piecemeal because KDE, Qt, and Python upgrades were causing a ton of circular blockers. Some of those blockers were fixed by pulling an older portage snapshot with removed ebuilds so emerge could rebuild dependencies in place. That particular machine has my original Gentoo installation from 2004 that I've kept updated (and moves to newer machines as I replace hardware). This is a new-ish problem.
| logrusx wrote: | And last but not least, sometimes live distributions might not be suitable for your needs.
Maybe say some more words what your needs are, so you can get better advice, even if that means something like "Use Arch/Ubuntu/whatever Linux". It might be better for you. |
Maintaining a Gentoo system has historically never required frequent upgrades. Aggressive pruning of the tree has only been a noticeable hassle in the last few years. |
While I actually agree that we should prune less aggressively (and I opined on it in another thread somewhere, and I plan to bring it up more formally at some point), in general, the sort of issues you described usually mean something else is lurking and being able to rebuild existing packages is a crutch Portage makes use of. That is, usually there's missing unmasks/keyword accepts/junk in world file and that needs to be debugged separately. |
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asturm
Developer
Joined: 05 Apr 2007
Posts: 9270
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| Posted: Wed Sep 04, 2024 4:15 am Post subject: |
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| flexibeast wrote: | | Is there a Policy on this? If not, could there be? For example - and i'm just spitballing here - "At least one previous ebuild must be retained, unless this cannot be done for technical reasons (such as a particular hard dependency no longer being available in-tree)." |
If you want to wear out maintainers - good luck enforcing that. 23.08.5 cleanup is way overdue.
And no, you don't need old ebuilds for upgrades. With spectacle:5 especially you would quickly find out that it actually has a dependency on kde-plasma/kpipewire:5 - so keeping it around only gives the illusion of choice.
| rcarz wrote: | | I recently spent several hours doing a world update piecemeal because KDE, Qt, [...] upgrades were causing a ton of circular blockers. |
KDE and Qt packages may be visible in "circular blockers" output, but they are rarely ever the actual reason for it - given a clean world file.
As always, if you need help in such cases, post to the forums.
Last edited by asturm on Wed Sep 04, 2024 5:57 am; edited 1 time in total |
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sam_
Developer
Joined: 14 Aug 2020
Posts: 1961
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| Posted: Wed Sep 04, 2024 5:33 am Post subject: |
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| Indeed. I was thinking of some genuine cases where I think it could help but this isn't one of them (at least not as a proper workaround or anything). Just seek help properly and we'll sort it out... |
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flexibeast
Guru
Joined: 04 Apr 2022
Posts: 449
Location: Naarm/Melbourne, Australia
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| Posted: Wed Sep 04, 2024 5:55 am Post subject: |
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| asturm wrote: | | If you want to wear out maintainers - good luck enforcing that. 23.08.5 cleanup is way overdue. |
Aaaaand that's the bigger picture i wasn't seeing.  i'm not a KDE / DE user myself, so i wasn't considering the common case of large collections of packages that need to be kept in sync; the issues i've experienced were with packages not part of such a collection.
Still, could maintainers at least be encouraged to, well, as sam_ has said elsethread, consider pruning less aggressively in cases where it's not obviously necessary (as it is in the case of KDE)?
| asturm wrote: | | flexibeast wrote: | | I recently spent several hours doing a world update piecemeal because KDE, Qt, [...] upgrades were causing a ton of circular blockers. |
KDE and Qt packages may be visible in "circular blockers" output, but they are rarely ever the actual reason for it - given a clean world file.
As always, if you need help in such cases, post to the forums. |
The attribution here is incorrect; i wasn't the one who "spent several hours", it was rcarz. |
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asturm
Developer
Joined: 05 Apr 2007
Posts: 9270
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| Posted: Wed Sep 04, 2024 5:57 am Post subject: |
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| flexibeast wrote: | | The attribution here is incorrect; i wasn't the one who "spent several hours", it was rcarz. :-) |
whoopsies, fixed. ;) |
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logrusx
Advocate
Joined: 22 Feb 2018
Posts: 2418
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| Posted: Wed Sep 04, 2024 6:22 am Post subject: |
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| rcarz wrote: |
| logrusx wrote: | And last but not least, sometimes live distributions might not be suitable for your needs.
Maybe say some more words what your needs are, so you can get better advice, even if that means something like "Use Arch/Ubuntu/whatever Linux". It might be better for you. |
Maintaining a Gentoo system has historically never required frequent upgrades. Aggressive pruning of the tree has only been a noticeable hassle in the last few years. |
I'm a Gentoo user since early 2008. I don't have such an impression. I actually took a break somewhere around 2011 due to the frequent upgrades required and the frequent breakages. I don't know what your usage was, but judging by my experience and the forums, your case must be rare.
Best Regards,
Georgi |
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rcarz
n00b
Joined: 01 Nov 2018
Posts: 8
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| Posted: Wed Sep 04, 2024 4:08 pm Post subject: |
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| asturm wrote: | | And no, you don't need old ebuilds for upgrades. With spectacle:5 especially you would quickly find out that it actually has a dependency on kde-plasma/kpipewire:5 - so keeping it around only gives the illusion of choice. |
I wanted to avoid upgrading to KDE 6 at that particular moment but needed to install the package. Without going back to get the list of proposed upgrades, I can't tell you exactly why it was causing rebuilds, only that it did. And in that moment, fetching the version 5 ebuild solved my problem faster and with less hassle.
| asturm wrote: | KDE and Qt packages may be visible in "circular blockers" output, but they are rarely ever the actual reason for it - given a clean world file.
As always, if you need help in such cases, post to the forums. |
I appreciate the intention but this is a little patronizing. Regardless, the concern is about aggressive pruning. |
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finoderi
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 29 Oct 2021
Posts: 75
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| Posted: Wed Sep 04, 2024 5:46 pm Post subject: |
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| rcarz wrote: | | And in that moment, fetching the version 5 ebuild solved my problem faster and with less hassle. |
Americans call it kicking the can down the road.
As far as I understand Gentoo doesn't have enough maintainers to afford the luxury of deviating from upstream as far as some users want. |
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asturm
Developer
Joined: 05 Apr 2007
Posts: 9270
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| Posted: Wed Sep 04, 2024 8:24 pm Post subject: |
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| rcarz wrote: | | I appreciate the intention but this is a little patronizing. Regardless, the concern is about aggressive pruning. |
I frankly don't care how you perceive it. You get free advice, take it or leave it. |
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eschwartz
Developer
Joined: 29 Oct 2023
Posts: 220
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| Posted: Thu Sep 05, 2024 3:05 am Post subject: |
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| rcarz wrote: |
I appreciate the intention but this is a little patronizing. Regardless, the concern is about aggressive pruning. |
As was noted by several people -- Gentoo does have a concern with regard to aggressive pruning, but your actual reported issue was NOT about aggressive pruning.
And frankly, you can have all the concerns you want. The KDE maintainers have expressed that this ecosystem is sufficiently complex that what you want isn't really viable.
| rcarz wrote: | | I need to be able to install one-off packages without doing a world update first. |
So... don't sync your ::gentoo tree? Then you can install anything you want. As a one-off.
This is really no different to any other linux distro, where you can hold back updates entirely or do a world update. Except that often, Gentoo allows you to have more flexibility but in the specific case of KDE it does not.
It's a *major version upgrade*. Maintaining multiple major versions of the entirety of KDE is not a scenario that has an available maintainer. Even maintaining *one* version of KDE is a complex and challenging job. Best way to fix that is to, well, have someone volunteer to maintain KDE 5, and either create an overlay or go through the recruitment process described at https://www.gentoo.org/get-involved/become-developer/ |
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ahyangyi
n00b
Joined: 03 May 2012
Posts: 9
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| Posted: Thu Sep 05, 2024 4:55 am Post subject: |
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I have an old Macbook on which I installed a Gentoo with KDE4, and never upgraded it to KDE5. So I maintained a local repository to keep things in KDE4. It turned out to be much more work than I expected, with things like consolekit getting dropped in the upstream, and conflicts with all the newer toys. And I basically gave up by 2021, with more and more issues to fix every day, and also the need to permanently disable the old QtWebkit to have any resemblance to security.
So I appreciate the Gentoo dev's maintenance efforts. So many things were unfortunately just not maintainable.
And as eschwartz has said, becoming a Gentoo developer is the best way to "fix" this kind of problem. And making a working overlay is a first step towards that. |
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