On 4/2/2011, at 9:31am, Neil Bothwick wrote: > ... > Any time you consider a process that involves emerge -e world, you should > also consider a reinstall. A reinstall will certainly be quicker, the > only reason for an in place fix is if you cannot take the machine down > for that length of time.
I disagree. The `emerge -e world` may take longer, but it will consume less of *my time* overseeing it. Obviously this may not be the case if we're talking about a desktop system in constant use, and the update breaks your web-browser. But in all my use cases I'm going to be able to leave the `emerge -e world` running in the background and just check up on it periodically. A Gentoo reinstall is not so easy as "click, click, click" and let it run. You should do a full backup first, because you can easily copy /etc over to the new machine and only afterwards realise you forgot to copy /var/bind/ An `emerge -e world` may break things, but it's not usually that likely to. Stroller.
