William L. Thomson Jr. posted on Mon, 10 Apr 2017 17:58:57 -0400 as
excerpted:
> When did changing targets to only have 1 version of Ruby, or 2 pythons
> becoming hacking. I do like how it was phrased. It shows right there the
> issue. If ANYONE has to hack around it, it sucks
>
>> Well, you've already dismissed the users for which it works out of the
>> box... obviously they're not a proper Gentoo users if they don't break
>> their system and then complain that Gentoo is doing everything wrong
>> because they can break their systems.
>
> Only users who it works for, is those who are not wanting specific
> versions and not others. As in those who do not set the targets and let
> them be wide open, or wildcard. So they do not care what is installed.
>
> They are likely also not doing much with USE flags or other things. They
> obviously do not care what is on their systems.
>
> Most any system admin does care about what is on their system. Every
> other version is another potential for security issues etc. What good
> system adminstrator just installs needless stuff because they are lazy.
Not to step into the general argument here, but you're arguing in the
name of gentoo users, of which I am one, and are misstating facts
regarding the situation for users, so I thought I'd step in and correct
that.
FWIW:
$$ equery l python
* Searching for python ...
[IP-] [ ] dev-lang/python-2.7.13:2.7
[IP-] [ ] dev-lang/python-3.4.6:3.4/3.4m
$$ grep -r PYTHON_TARGETS /etc/portage
/etc/portage/make/useexpand:PYTHON_TARGETS="python3_4 python2_7"
Every once in awhile I decide to check to see if I can make that python3_5
yet, with something like this (lines added between packages for clarity
due to wrapping):
$$ emerge -vp --emptytree @world | grep python3_4 | grep -v python3_5
[ebuild R] net-dns/bind-9.11.0_p3::gentoo USE="caps filter-
idn ssl threads xml zlib -berkdb -dlz -dnstap -doc -fixed-rrset -geoip -
gost -gssapi -ipv6 -json -ldap -libressl -lmdb -mysql -nslint -odbc -
postgres -python -rpz (-seccomp) (-selinux) -static-libs -urandom"
PYTHON_TARGETS="python2_7 python3_4" 0 KiB
[ebuild R] app-portage/mirrorselect-2.2.2-r2::gentoo
PYTHON_TARGETS="python2_7 python3_4" 0 KiB
[ebuild R] app-portage/esearch-1.3-r1::gentoo LINGUAS="-fr -it"
PYTHON_TARGETS="python2_7 python3_4" 0 KiB
OK, so I've not synced and updated since the end of March (30th) so that
might be slightly dated, but as of that sync, there's still three
packages I have installed that haven't yet been certified as having
python3_5 support yet.
So I continue to wait before trying the python:3.5 update. In the mean
time, it's locally masked so as to prevent randomly pulling it in, and
packages continue to "just work" with 2.7/3.4.
No real hassle or hacks. No specific per-package PYTHON_TARGET settings
for some other :3.x, but I've set the global PYTHON_TARGETS to get just
the two versions, one 3.x and one 2.x. There is as I said a simple
package mask to prevent pulling in :3.5 prematurely, but that's not a
hack, nor is it complex, it's a quite reasonable straight-forward package-
mask of a newer version because not everything's ready to handle it yet
and I don't want to pull in a third version unless I really have to.
Yet I'm anything /but/ the claimed:
> They are likely also not doing much with USE flags or other things.
> They obviously do not care what is on their systems.
Not only do I set USE="-* ..." to prevent devs randomly screwing up my
painstakingly set USE flags, but I also set -* in
/etc/portage/profile/packages (a newly possible negated wildcard, FWIW)
to negate the full cascaded @system set.
Further more, I am known to make the argument that anyone with the
responsibility of managing what's installed on their own systems is a de-
facto sysadmin, and should be taking that responsibility very seriously,
including the security implications of excess packages, etc, as I most
certainly do myself.
That's also why I run the gentoo git repo and check selected commit
messages based on what portage wants to update, including many of the -r
updates (upstream didn't update, what's important enough for a gentoo -r
bump and is it something I need to worry about other implications of for
my system?), and checking out every one of the bugs listed in the portage
update commit messages. Of course I check upstream changelogs as well
for selected important packages, and run live-git- versions of some
of them, checking upstream git logs as well. (Not that I'd argue that
/every/ responsible admin must do that, but it can certainly help in
figuring out what went wrong with the update, sometimes, which at times
makes my job as an admin easier. =:^)
Taking that admin responsibility seriously is also, BTW, the big reason
I'm subscribed here, to get a heads-up on many of the major system
changes that are likely to affect me before I'm trying to figure them out
from emerge
