Need guidance/strategy for X upgrade

[gcostanz]

It seems that over many weeks of upgrades I now have a hybrid system: mostly stable ebuilds, but some unstable stuff. I like this-- I moved to Gentoo to be able to experiment with the latest software.

But now I have come to a situation where many updates require either a downgrade of some ebuilds, or an update to the latest Xfree, GCC and glibC. I'd like to just bite the bullet and upgrade to Xfree-4.3.0-r1. But this will require an upgrade to glibc-2.3.2-r1 (I'm using 2-3-1-r4).

I'm looking for some guidance on how best to proceed without hosing my system. I'm particularly concerned about upgrading glibc. Will I have to recompile the entire system and the kernel? I'd like to take this in small manageable chunks, say by starting with the glibc and gcc upgrades followed by a reboot-- then Xfree and Xft, etc.

What is a good strategy for doing this upgrade with a minimal risk of trashing the system? What are the risks involved in upgrading glibc? How can I eliminate or minimize these risks (say by upgrading in a certain order)?

Waiting for these packages to be moved to stable is one option, but not one that I desire.

[ebrostig]

The short answer is: No, you don't have to recompile everything.

The kernel is not using glibc anyway, so that takes care of it.

There are several programs that are dependent on glibc, it's hard to say which. The quick way to find out, is to update glibc, run your normal programs. If some of them fail to start, remerge them. A bit tedious, I know.

Upgrading glibc itself is very straigh forward, just do emerge -u glibc. No need to do anything special.

I have upgraded several versions of glibc that way withou much of a problem and my system is running on the bleeding edge. I even use the development snapshots of Xfree. Works like a charm.

Have fun, go for it!

Erik
_________________
'Yes, Firefox is indeed greater than women. Can women block pops up for you? No. Can Firefox show you naked women? Yes.'