Chris Gianelloni posted <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, excerpted below, on Fri, 01 Jul 2005 18:01:43 -0400:
> Last time that I checked, each arch needs at least one non-cascaded > profile, due to older versions of portage not working with cascaded > profiles. Either this, or users will not be able to upgrade from old > installations that have not been upgraded for some time. IIRC (because I made a similar argument, tho likely not as well) when this came up the last time, the decision was to create a rescue site with one such profile per arch, getting them out of the tree and uncluttering it. Either that, or combine it with the rescue portage project, such that they can download and untar a functionally usable cascade understanding portage version to get them out of between the rock and the hard place, using the same functionality now in place for when portage itself crashes. This alternative may actually already be in place only we hadn't thought about it. The idea being... If someone has been offline for two years or whatever, it's really sort of unreasonable for them to expect a problem free upgrade in the first place. They can post a question on the lists or forums or irc, and be directed to the proper location and procedure as necessary. Alternatively, and /not/ that much less practically if you think about it anyway, given the number of packages they'll have to update if they've been offline for well over a year, they can simply download the latest LiveCD and start over with a clean install, even stage-3 plus GRP, if they are impatient, and be caught-up with far less hassle than attempting to do it in-place, starting from such an old snapshot that there's been no testing nor real consideration of the upgrade path in the first place, thereby creating far more hassle than necessary for themselves, getting everything working. IOW, just as Gentoo as it exists today isn't really suitable for nor does it support the multi-year "freeze-frame" snapshots plus security-only update routine of strict enterprise policy, because that simply doesn't fit the continual update community focused distribution model Gentoo has chosen, so a similarly outdated "offline for two years" Gentoo installation cannot be expected to be able to update as if it were last updated a week ago. The Gentoo model does not support such, nor, without dividing scarce developer resources, can it be made to do so, regardless of whether those last non-cascading profiles remain in place or not. The rescue portage may well work, but even then, there will be other issues. If it's been a year, chances are a from-latest-stage-X upgrade will be about even hassle compared to an upgrade in place. If it's been a year and a half, things favor the from-stage-X upgrade. If it's been two years or longer, things VASTLY favor the from-stage-X upgrade. That's just the way it is, with Gentoo as it exists today. If it's not the profiles causing the issue, it'll be some other incompatibility causing headaches, and whether or not they can be overcome, from-stage-X is simply going to be less of an issue, and be easier to support, because others will have likely run into similar problems, so the answers will be easier to find. -- Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs. "Every nonfree program has a lord, a master -- and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman in http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2004/12/22/rms_interview.html -- gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list
