On Fri, 14 Nov 2014 10:03:27 -0800 Zac Medico wrote: [...] > >> Sorry Zac, I posted my reply before I read this. This is essentially > >> the point I was making. However, I think this will be cumbersome. With > >> the current way we do things, its easy to delete packages from @system > >> by just doing '-*sys-apps/man-pages' (for example) in a profile's > >> packages file. It is not so easy to delete from a DEPEND string, so I > >> foresee some tricky if logic here. > > > > There is another drawback of using virtuals instead of @system set. > > For old systems (in practical terms they are systems not updated > > @world for more than several month) it is wise to update kernel, > > @system and only afterwards whole @world. > > > > Virtuals will not catch updates in underlying packages if --deep is > > not used and it can't be used, because some packages from @system > > may indirectly depend on packages from @world (e.g. cairo, qt or > > xorg) which will trigger half of the @world update with -D @system > > which makes it impossible and impractical to use -D @system before > > full @world update on old setups. > > > > We already have this problem with virtua/libc: it is not updated at > > all, so when I run emerge -uav @system for the purposes described > > above I have to manually add sys-devel/glibc to the list. > > There was a time long ago when portage actually behaved the way you want > here. I implemented the behavior myself, but then I changed it to the > way it is now because others complained that "virtuals should behave > just like normal packages." We could certainly add an emerge option > which would trigger the behavior that you want.
If this switch will be available, it would be great! And in such case I don't mind for system->virtual switch for my profiles. Moreover it would be great to have this switch even now to avoid "glibc not updated with @system" issues. Best regards, Andrew Savchenko
pgpgbNSP_qIsH.pgp
Description: PGP signature
