Only some three things make me hesitate:
1. I have not yet understood how some - definitely important - config files are kept in sync. Look at /etc/make.profile/packages. qpkg seems not to find a port which claims ownership to this file, nonetheless it *is* important - and especially important to be kept up to date.
> 3. Recently the shiny and new gentoo 1.4 rc3 version was > released. From FreeBSD I'm used to decently ignore any > announcements like this, because frequntly syncing the source tree > and rebuilding/installing kernel/world reliably provided me the > most current version of the "STABLE"-development branch. > > How about gentoo? > > Or, to put the question into another form: If I > > - install gentoo 1.4 rc2 > > and daily > > - "emerge sync" (in my case "emerge-webrsync" due to firewall > limitations) > - emerge -up world > > will there be any difference to having installed gentoo 2.7 rc3 on > the day where it counts?
This answers kinda both questions 1 and 3: ls -l /etc/make.profile /etc/make.profile -> /usr/portage/profiles/default-x86-1.4/
This is an inherent file/link to the portage directory tree. Now, doing the usual emerge rsync; emerge -u (no 'p') world will keep most of your packages up to date. However, what package versions fit the /etc/make.profile/packages file will vary release to release. This will be most noticable from the transistion from gcc-2.95 to gcc 3.x.
You see, this file contains lists of required minimum/maximum/absolute versions of packages. Most of your programs will be continually updated, but any that are fixed at a particular version by the profile will not upgrade unless you change the profile or manually merge masked packages.
So, if you stay current: for the most part release changes will be minimal (excepting compiler roll over).
2. I use vanilla sources 2.4.20. OK, from gentoo's viewpoint this is just a port like many others, no prob with that. Only the header files, which I believed to be redundant, are nailed down to "=sys-kernel/linux-headers-2.4.19" in the mentioned file. Any attempt to use no headers at all or at least the version corresponding to my kernel version failed. What gives?
Most programs will either: a: Blindly use /usr/src/linux (or /usr/include/linux) b: use /usr/src/`uname -r`/
For the most part, you can probably just: emerge -i sys-kernel/linux-headers-2.4.19
...and compiles will just use your actual /usr/src/linux directory tree.
Anything that is really version dependant should use method "b," and for the most part, those that use /usr/include/linux (the location of the kernel headers package) aren't really looking for much other than relatively stable symbols, prototypes, etc.
In otherwords, don't worry about it. :-)
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