Should emerge -uD world do revdep-rebuild?

[thawn]

Hi

recently I often had problems after an emerge -uD world. Most of them were fixed by revdep-rebuild (the rest was due to errors in ebuilds and fixed by emerge --sync )
So I just wondered whether it would make sense to make emerge run revdep-rebuild automatically in the background after emerge -uD world. This will take a little longer but fix a lot of issues and avoid a lot of puzzled users. I for my part will always run revdep-rebuild after emerge -uD world...

Just a little poll to hear some opinions...

[swimmer]

Since I use already this script I opt for running it every time

[John R. Graham]

I voted "No" as I am generally against making sharp tools dull.

- John

[SiberianSniper]

I've never really run into problems with emerge -uDN world. It's generally only when I mess things up on my own that I need revdep-rebuild. So my vote is no.

[jlh]

I never had any such problem. The only case where I ever needed revdep-rebuild is when I use --depclean. In my humble opinion, if after an emerge -uD you run into such problems, it should be considered a bug in the ebuild or whatever.

[tanderson]

[steveL]

I've read a couple of times recently (sorry I don't have any links) that the correct procedure for update is -uDN world followed by --depclean and then revdep-rebuild. Before that, I'd heard only about revdep-rebuild as recommended for libraries broken by package upgrade (which is what revdep itself states.) So we built that into update and are actually considering --depclean for the next version. (update only defaults to -uDN world && revdep when used with no options or a shortcut such as -s to sync first.)

Revdep can be a bit slow but in the context of system updates I never really notice it. Kojiro is working on a new version which is already 50% faster or something so I look forward to that :)

One thing we will definitely add is cruft-filtering of the revdep builds, most likely with the new revdep. It's really cool having etc-proposals btw, which I recommend, as it pops up in whichever desktop I'm on, telling me the update has finished successfully.

As for gentoolkit being optional it's one of the first things I and many others install (eg for equery or euse, or indeed revdep-rebuild.) But yeah, maybe the script should check for its existence (it still has the logic for checking for logger after all.. ;)

[thawn]

Thank you all for your comments!
I would like to renew the discussion a bit.
The existence of a script like update shows me, that this issue appears quite frequently.
To my opinion the fact that revdep-rebuild is not a default package is the best argument against making it default.
This could of course be easily resolved by integrating revdep-rebuild into the portage package.
I still think, making revdep-rebuild default when the -D option is set makes sense, since this can break things. I think this is especially important, since new users don't know that revdep-rebuild exists (or an option like -R) and just think its a bug.

So I still vote for extending the -D feature in a way that it recognizes if other packages depend on an updated library and updates them as well or throws a warning. This could be done by running revdep rebuild in the background, or by integrating the feature into portage.

I think this would save many people a lot of time and would help to give gentoo a more user friendly and less geeky image (which some people certainly enjoy: "I'm running Gentoo, see how well I know my linux". Admittedly I also like the respectful nods when I tell people I am running Gentoo on my server at home ).

As to making sharp tools dull: The sharpest of tools doesn't help you if you don't know it exists.

[Clete2]

I voted for a flag for it, but only because I'm lazy. Most people who just start out using Gentoo don't know about revdep-rebuild and how many problems it can fix. A flag would be nice, but is not necessary. We should not add bloat to Portage by making it run every time. That'll just make it slower than it already is. 99% of the time, nothing in my system breaks when I run emerge -uD world. I run emerge -uD world about once a week and sometimes more, so I have less problems than many people do.

A message at the end of the emerge saying "If something is broken, run revdep-rebuild first before asking for help!" would be nice... -- right along the "/etc has x files that need updating" message.
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[asturm]

[steveL]

[padoor]

out of 10 emerge -Du world i have seen atleast 3 times it needs to run revdep-rebuild due to various reasons

if only it were
so i would like an emerge command with -R flag to do this function .
2 times i have been asked by the running emerge world in the middle of a session and then continue to emerge rest of it.
now if you run revdep-rebuild every time it will be a waste of time while for a long time we wait untill something breaks then only we usually run it
it would be very convenient like the fsck runs after number of mounts if revdep-rebuild made automatic check for broken installation of any package . time dependent? no kernel should have a routine to find problem and prompt for revdep-rebuild or run it by force.
that would save lot of trouble ahen too many packages break all of a sudden.
the above are probably my dreams / musings
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[VforVendetta]

I like padoor's suggestion.

I'd like it to have a revdep-rebuild flag set up, so that the command can be incorporated into an emerge operation. If the command could be invoked, when a fixable error condition is present, then so much the better.

Especially helpful, would be the option to set a flag 'Invoke_Revdep=[yes,no]' or similar, in /etc/make.conf, so that emerge would automatically read the variable and invoke revdep-rebuild IF the build error condition was met.

People who don't have revdep-rebuild installed, would have the command bypassed during an emerge.
People who do have revdep-rebuild, would have the simplicity of not having to invoke the command (with an emerge flag) explicitly, each time they utilised emerge.

Customisable...the Gentoo way.

[dmpogo]

I think there is a some mismatch between revdep-rebuild and emerge functionalities, and probably it would be good if revdep-rebuild would be part of emerge but as additional flags. Perhaps even flags that can be forced by some packages !

The situation with libexpat highlighted this of course. You run

[tabanus]

I voted "with another flag". Actually I'd probably set it in FEATURES.

My reasoning is this, when a portage update comes up in emerge -u world, it says something like: emerge with halt after this package then re-calculate the package order. I'd have a package that requires revdep-rebuild after it say something like this:

emerge will halt after this package and run revdep-rebuild <package, soname, whatever> before resuming. i.e. I would have it run in the middle of the emerge run, where it's appropriate, before continuing with the other packages. This would have sorted most of the problems with the expat update (assuming revdep-rebuild actually generated the correct package order, which it didn't for expat).
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[dmpogo]

[thawn]

So, let me reformulate my feature request (or is it a bug fix :
How about some information in the ebuilds of libraries that change their binary names.
If this information is present, portage should also reemerge all packages that depend on this library.
I think this calculation could be done even before starting the actual emerge so the reemerges would show up during emerge -puDv world.
This way the extra calculation time would only occur when it is actually necessary.
This should prevent problems during updating 99% of the time and make updates run much more smoothly.

Especially after the expat update every Gentoo user should be aware of the broken link problems. No matter how frequently you update your system, if an important library changes a binary name, your system will break, unless you reemerge all packages that depend on tis library.

[padoor]

the broken condition must be notified by the running emerge -Du world command.
the halt of emerge under such condition is already present. i think.
i have seen emerge -Du world terminates itself for various conditions including broken or use flag limitation or requirements.
if a notification to run revdep-rebuild when becomes necessary may be incorporated in the emerge command. like several other warnings it gives. or like update all your config files at the end of an emerge session
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[hielvc]

Reasons against
1. If you make it a flag then gentoolkit HAS TO BE installed when portage is.
2. You are making a mistake thinking that people are going to read " man portage " and " man emerge "
3. So what you say. If they dont want to learn how to take care of their NIX box then they should run windows. The idea behind UNIX is small tools that do one thing well, so we are getting there

If you want to run revdep-rebuild after emerge <whatever> then make an function in your .bashrc

[tabanus]

[hielvc]

Yup. So if'n you dont want to run revdep-rebuild every time then just run emerge and if you do that then maybe when you think that you should run revdep then you can just run it too

Question #2 lots of people. Just look at all the peeps who post their emerge --info and are still running gcc-3.3.6.
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[steveL]