What do you NOT like about Gentoo?

Hypnos · Posted: Tue Oct 28, 2008 2:45 am Post subject:

audiodef,

Use ccache -- your work will be saved, so if you have to re-emerge a package it will go (relatively) quickly.

As for collision-protect, I don't think it's very useful. Large packages like GNOME, OpenOffice, KDE, etc. move files around between subpackages/dependencies, and this trips collision-protect.
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NathanZachary · Moderator Joined: 30 Jan 2007 Posts: 2605

I personally don't like finding an application that I want is not available in the standard tree. I am not keen on using overlays, and for a simple package to sit in "maintainer wanted" is frustrating. Maybe one day when I am comfortable at writing and maintaining ebuilds, I will be able to help out.

I also don't understand why certain things are more complicated/seemingly impossible to get working in Gentoo but not in other distros. The two that come to mind are the Firefox slowness when viewing a page with the background CSS, and ntfs-3g automounting in KDE. Other than those, I really like all the aspects of Gentoo. I don't even mind compilation time.
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few · Guru Joined: 03 Mar 2008 Posts: 448

drescherjm · Posted: Tue Oct 28, 2008 1:01 pm Post subject:

Hypnos · Posted: Tue Oct 28, 2008 1:04 pm Post subject:

Similarly, a change in a USE flag rarely affects more than a small portion of the code.
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Yamakuzure · Posted: Tue Oct 28, 2008 1:41 pm Post subject:

OpenOffice 3 is buggy? That explains why I got it stable on one machine, and on another (I sync'ed there one day later) it is still (or aigain) marked as unstable...

...but I haven't had a single problem with ooo3 on this machine, and I am working quite alot with it... But then this could be sheer luck, of course.
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Geralt · Apprentice Joined: 14 Jun 2008 Posts: 150

drescherjm · Posted: Tue Oct 28, 2008 1:51 pm Post subject:

Since oo3 is new in my opinion it should still be in testing. And being in testing for me does not mean that an application is buggy. Just like being in stable does not mean the application is bug free.
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audiodef · Posted: Tue Oct 28, 2008 1:55 pm Post subject:

Hypos, few and drescherjm: thanks!

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maltheus · Posted: Tue Oct 28, 2008 2:54 pm Post subject:

Blocked packages really tick me off. If the solution usually involves unmerging or emerging in a different order, why can't portage handle that? And although the solution is usually to just unmerge the blocker, sometimes that will also break your system so I'm always forced to check the forums first. Surely the proper instructions could be encoded into the ebuild somehow.

audiodef · Posted: Tue Oct 28, 2008 3:15 pm Post subject:

drescherjm · Posted: Tue Oct 28, 2008 3:22 pm Post subject:

Geralt · Apprentice Joined: 14 Jun 2008 Posts: 150

About blocked packages:
https://bugs.gentoo.org/234907 this bug has today (or maybe yesterday) reached the stable tree

Here's the follow-up bug report https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=244511

Something like that should just not happen.

torontolimo · n00b Joined: 28 Oct 2008 Posts: 3

The time it takes to compile a package...
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viralex · Posted: Tue Oct 28, 2008 6:22 pm Post subject:

I know that the label 'amd64' is right, but I'd like to see 'x86_64' instead!

I'm on a intel quad! :evil:

yngwin · Posted: Wed Oct 29, 2008 12:04 am Post subject:

jonnevers · Posted: Wed Oct 29, 2008 2:10 am Post subject:

admax88 · n00b Joined: 23 Aug 2008 Posts: 21

I love gentoo, I think its the best distribution out there.

The one thing that I see could use improvement is package specific use flag documentation. It would be nice to know exactly what effect a use flag has on a specific package before compiling.

Hypnos · Posted: Wed Oct 29, 2008 4:29 am Post subject:

d2_racing · Posted: Wed Oct 29, 2008 11:40 am Post subject:

audiodef · Posted: Wed Oct 29, 2008 12:58 pm Post subject:

Something I don't like that's an oddity is that over time, things will start to not work when you emerge them (for example, I've been having trouble lately with xorg-server-1.5.2 and xf86-video-intel-2.5.0) but when you do a clean install of Gentoo, all is well with the emerge world.

If it's going to work on a clean install, it should work on an existing install - or tell you what you need to change to get it to work.
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Hypnos · Posted: Wed Oct 29, 2008 1:19 pm Post subject:

audiodef,

That's probably because devs only test package upgrades against latest versions of their deps. This is an even bigger issue with unstable arches. Hence the recommendation to do deep upgrades.

I prefer to use stable and try my luck with only leaf upgrades, along with whatever dep upgrades are pulled in. Fewer total upgrades, less breakage on a continuing basis; meta-package upgrades (e.g., GNOME) end up upgrading a lot of deps in either case, so I just wait for them.

***

Geralt/d2_racing,

Can you expect the devs to test every USE flag combination? The only reason this one hurt is because it broke something essential needed to emerge (wget), otherwise a revdep-rebuild would fix it. This is why Gentoo is harder to maintain than a binary distribution. The coordination problem was exacerbated by the kerberos dev being on vacation.

Two possible solutions: have system be self-contained and minimize USE flags (a la BSD), or make all tools needed to emerge static. The latter is tricky for Portage, which uses Python and wget.
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natros · n00b Joined: 26 Sep 2003 Posts: 70

Geralt · Apprentice Joined: 14 Jun 2008 Posts: 150

Hypnos · Posted: Wed Oct 29, 2008 7:24 pm Post subject:

Geralt,

I agree that repository QA should have caught this unresolved dep for mit-krb5 and heimdal. The devs know this. The problem is that once a mistake is made, in this case pushing e2fsprogs{-lib} into stable before the requiring packages, there's no easy way to take it back because it's already been deployed in systems.

FWIW, mit-krb5-1.6.3-r4 has already gone stable; the total delay is ~40 hours.

Does this point to a systemic problem in the way stabilization is done? Maybe; I am not aware of a pattern. In any case, automated QA tools wouldn't hurt.

EDIT: Devs are instructed to use repoman before committing, as described here. Even with the "kerberos" USE flag set, repoman did not find this error (my Portage tree is synced between the e2fsprogs{-lib} and mit-krb5-1.6.3-r4 stabilizations). And on my Core2 machine it took 20+ minutes just to run -- impossible to test all USE flag combos. Finally, I do not have qualudis (the Paludis repo QA tool) installed.