Rich Freeman posted on Fri, 05 Sep 2014 20:10:02 -0400 as excerpted: > The purpose of the system set is to deal with circular deps and the need > to bootstrap. We shouldn't have stuff in there if it is possible to run > without it. > > There are loads of things I can't live without which aren't in the > system set. I have a default world file that I always start with > anytime I do an install.
Does portage still force serial builds of anything in the system-set and all deps thereof?[1] If so, given a situation where even most phones are multi-core these days, does /anything/ other than circular deps and bootstrapping really justify forcing /all/ the several @system packages and deps I had before I started pruning, into serial build? And isn't it time to think about something similar to the "-*" for USE flags, but aimed at @system instead, so those like me that wish to be free of the problem can simply set -* in /etc/portage/profile/packages and be done with it, instead of having to negate them one by one, and constantly patrol[2] lest a proposal such as this add something else to be negated? I've been running @system-less for quite some time now, two years or better I think, and it hasn't killed my system yet. While @system might be useful for bringing up a system as well as for the extra warnings on @system-set member removal it gives people who need a bit of hand- holding, I think it's fair to say that I've demonstrated by now that it's entirely unnecessary on a system with a reasonably careful sysadmin (careful enough that if something bad /does/ happen, there's several levels of tested-bootable backup available that can be used to rescue the normal working-boot copy). And/or, perhaps kill that forced @system serial emerge thing and let existing deps take care of things, if it hasn't been done already. At least on amd64/nomultilib, it's obviously not necessary or I'd have run into issues by now. [1] I wouldn't know, as that's one reason I decided to negate the entire system-set and now have an empty @system. [2] For me, it's when I see emerge --pretend --depclean's empty-system- set warning disappear. -- Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs. "Every nonfree program has a lord, a master -- and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman
