On Sat, 8 Jul 2017 18:34:55 -0400 Rich Freeman <ri...@gentoo.org> wrote: > > What do sets get us that packages do not? Why not move the other > direction and just have packages instead of sets?
The blog entry I provided a link to I think made the best case example of usage of sets and their benefits. https://makuro.wordpress.com/2010/12/12/intro-to-portage-sets/ The biggest advantage is ability to re-emerge all without additional steps or arguments. Simple emerge @my_set just like emerge world, etc. Even more useful you can remove a set directly, without depclean. If you remove a meta package, you have to run depclean to remove the actual packages in the meta ebuild. Sets save you from this step. Sets are also used for package rebuilds, like x11-module-rebuild, live-rebuild, and others. > One issue I see with sets is that as far as I can tell they aren't > specified in PMS at all, so they can't go into the tree at all, and > not all package managers may support them in the same way. Certainly > this could be standardized, but I'm not sure what they actually get > us. world and system are sets we all have. Not sure about PMS. It is something portage has supported for some time. You likely have many sets already on your system emerge --list-sets https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/World_set_(Portage) https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/System_set_(Portage) https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki//etc/portage/sets https://dev.gentoo.org/~zmedico/portage/doc/ch02s02.html -- William L. Thomson Jr.
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