On 4/4/09, Neil Bothwick <n...@digimed.co.uk> wrote:
> On Sat, 04 Apr 2009 02:24:58 +0300, Arttu V. wrote:
>
>> - Managing USE flags is sometimes quite irritating, having to fidget
>> around /etc/make.conf, /etc/portage/package.use and such with
>> everyone's favourite text editors. (Maybe I'm micromanaging them too
>> much?)
>
> emerge flagedit

Yes, flagedit sure helps on a single box, but when running several
Gentoo boxes, with slightly differing USE settings, arches and whatnot
(firewall, server, old box for light browsing/office work, new-ish
multimedia/gaming workstation, a laptop, one with radeon-drivers,
another with nvidia-drivers etc), it all tends to get a bit hairy.

What I'm maybe thinking about is some kind of Microsoft AD / SUS style
or similar pushing parts of policies or changes across all boxes in a
domain (or whatever they call them there). But then again, if that is
a priority, then running Windows or CentOS Linux with Red Hat's stuff
might be better for that than Gentoo in the first place? :)

>> - Keeping the crud out of /etc/portage/package.keywords and other
>> similar portage files (much like with the case of USE flags above) for
>> us who don't run bleeding edge ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="arch ~arch".
>
> eix-test-obsolete

That was a good call, thank you! I have been avoiding eix for various
reasons, but now I emerged it and tried it. Blindfolded and both hands
tied behind its back eix-test-obselete beat my own embarrassingly
simplistic helper perl-scripts. Very good indeed, thanks!

> Would you rather portage simply re-emerged installed packages with
> different USE flags without consulting you? I suppose a "package X needs
> to be remerged with USE=Y, proceed Y/n" message could be useful, maybe
> with an option to do accept this automatically.

Yes, I think this is more of a default settings issue. I'm betting
999/1000 cases or even worse, the user/admin just goes and emerges the
dep with the required USE anyway. So why waste the time (or introduce
compulsory interactivity) from most people and not have it as a
default?

Ok, I admit, it might create some really hairy situations for deep
trees when some critical system package would get silently re-emerged
with a new flag -- but maybe the automagic could only work for
packages not in system/@system? Then  there would be hope of having a
reasonably sane box (command line) remaining even if the automagic in
the emerge would end up shooting yourself in the foot ...

> Gentoo is about providing ultimate control to the admin, so you can't
> really complain about having to make those choices :)

Hrpmft, I thought by now -- after about a decade or so of development
of the brightest young minds of planet Earth -- there would be a
package available in Gentoo with a command or script like
eix-do-what-i-mean(t). ;)

-- 
Arttu V.

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