On 02/14/2013 11:26 AM, James wrote: > Hello, > > Context: Stable Systems with a few newer packages > (unmasked) in portage. > --snip-- > > So, my latest ideas is to "sync up" and then wait one week > before acutally installing those new packages. This would > allow the fodder that the good folks on this list catch, > bitch about (um, I mean file bug reports) and fix, to > occur first; then I can complete the package update > cautiously avoiding an "emerge sync".
I suppose you could set up a weekly cron job (say on a Saturday) to do something like: emerge -fuDN world > proposed_change.txt Then a few days later (say Wednesday?) email that file to yourself so you know what changes are being proposed. This will give you a "snapshot" in email of changes week-to-week. I've done this before and you'll just get output like this (in this case, I did mythtv only, not world): These are the packages that would be merged, in order: Calculating dependencies .... done! [ebuild R ~] media-tv/mythtv-0.26.0_p20130121 You can then manually apply the updates. > > But when you "emerge sync" if to do the updates immediately, they'll be > the latest packages. If I do a "emerge sync" and wait > 7 days to begin updating the packages, I'll be delayed > by one week, and have a one week of buffered fixes for added > problem filtering. But those fixes might not be available > without a fresh "emerge sync"? Yep, but if you set up an email above, you'll know which versions are proposed and you can even search for problems beforehand. Additionally, because you now have an email copy of it, you could probably set up grep/awk/head/tail/etc to strip out everything but the package prefixed with an '=' so it only pulls those packages. This way even if it syncs again on its cron, you'll still have a list of packages, but this doesn't help if the sync removes existing packages from portage (which can happen.) > > > When time permits I CAN CHOOSE to "emerge sync" and then immediately > update the packages and parse through the issues mostly. Call > this the stable-stable approach to gentoo updates. Yep, but it's still work. Especially if you forgot one week and have to update the packages manually. > I'm increasingly managing more Gentoo systems, particularly embedded > and server based gentoo systems and that is the source that compounds these > time-sink-issues for me. Maybe some external-integrated management approach > such as CFengine is my answer? CFEngine? I didn't even know what that was until now. I've usually just used tools readily available on most installs that didn't require extra software. Dan
