On Fri, 7 Sep 2012 21:25:22 +0200 Fabian Groffen <grob...@gentoo.org> wrote: > I like that! Kudos for making it work! > > I just wonder what the heck that has to do with SLOT.
The correct fix for "not needing to rebuild" stuff is to SLOT libraries like crazy, and have a SLOT per thing-we-don't-call-ABI. This then needs := dependencies, so that packages can say "and remember which SLOT I was built against". However, there are some packages that cannot easily be SLOTted to the degree that we'd like. This is where sub-SLOTs come in. Given sub-SLOTted packages dep:1/a and dep:1/b, this says "I'd like to have slots 1a and 1b, but it's too difficult to allow 1a and 1b to be installed at the same time". So suppose the user has pkg with a dependency upon dep, with slot 1 and a := operator. They install pkg when dep:1/a is installed. The user then installs dep:1/b. In an ideal world, dep:1/a would remain installed in parallel with dep:1/b, but your friendly Gentoo developers have decided it's not worth their time to allow this. Thus, dep:1/a has to be uninstalled to allow dep:1/b to be installed. But this would break pkg, since pkg needs dep:1/a. However, a clever dependency resolver can note that reinstalling pkg would fix it, since dep:1/b also satisfies pkg's slot 1 := dependency (but not the locked 1/a dependency that the installed version of pkg has picked up). -- Ciaran McCreesh
signature.asc
Description: PGP signature
