Re: portage 'world' maintenance

Joshua Hoblitt <jhoblittifa.hawaii.edu> posted
20070703005516.GD15998ifa.hawaii.edu, excerpted below, on  Mon,
02 Jul
2007 14:55:16 -1000:

> On Tue, Jul 03, 2007 at 03:39:11AM +0300, Daniel Iliev
wrote:
>> On Mon, 2 Jul 2007 14:06:25 -1000
>> Joshua Hoblitt <jhoblittifa.hawaii.edu> wrote:
>> 
>> > Is there a CLI utility to add/remove values
from 'world' without
>> > causing packages to be emerged/unemerged? 
Even the emerge --inject
>> > functionality is gone. Or for that mater, is
there even a way of
>> > listing what's in world?  I've gotten into the
habit of editing
>> > /var/lib/portage/world by hand but I always
feel 'dirty' for doing
>> > this.
>> > 
>> > -J
>> > 
>> > --
>> 
>> 
>> From "man emerge"
>> 
>> --noreplace (-n)
>>        Skips  the  packages  specified  on  the 
command-line that have
>>        already been installed.   Without  this 
option,  any packages,
>>        ebuilds,  or  deps  you  specify  on the
command-line will cause
>>        Portage to remerge the package, even if it
is already installed.
>>        Note that Portage will not remerge
dependencies by default.
>> 
>> This adds packages to "world". I manually
edit the file when I want to
>> remove some packages from "world" w/o
actually uninstalling them.
> 
> Yes, I agree that -n will causes packages to be added
to world but it
> also causes them to be emerged immediately which is not
always desired.
> A practically example of this usage case is where your
about to run an
> `emerge -DNuva world` or `emerge -e world` and you want
to make
> modifications to 'world'.

Also take a look at dep, from the app-portage/udept package.
 It has some 
nice functionality, like cleaning up unneeded entries in
your world 
file.  OTOH, some of its functionality doesn't work quite
right... the 
spring-clean option, for instance, is similar to emerge
--depclean, only 
not quite as safe.  Apparently its dependency resolver
misses certain 
dependencies.  (I'm guessing it sees the ones in the ebuilds
themselves 
but misses some or all that are pulled in by the eclasses,
that are 
therefore not listed specifically in the ebuilds.)  Thus,
always use it 
with -p (pretend, same as emerge) first, and check its list
for sanity.  
Actually, with any of that sort of tools, emerge --depclean,
dep --spring-
clean, dep --pruneworld, revdep-rebuild, anything like that,
I prefer to 
use the --pretend, and then issue the commands to do what
needs done 
manually.  I don't normally let any of those programs do
what they want 
to do on their own, just using the --pretend to get a list
of things I 
need to take care of manually.

As for handling my world file, my normal portage aliases all
have 
--oneshot as one of the options, so I don't have to worry
about adding 
non-leaf dependencies to the world file in my routine
merging.  I have 
special aliases that subtract the --oneshot, thus adding the
package to 
the world file, if I want to do so.  I have a special alias
that does the 
--noreplace thing too, when I've merged the package and
decide I want to 
add it to world after all.  That gives me a way to "try
out" new 
packages, just merging them with my normal aliases (so with
--oneshot) to 
try them out, then if I've forgotten about them, the next
time I run 
emerge --pretend --depclean, they show up there, and I can
decide whether 
I want to keep them, adding them to my world file with
emerge --
noreplace, or not, in which case I do an emerge --unmerge.

OK, this is wandering the thread a bit, but my alias system
works like 
this.  At the base, I have two sets, ea* and ep*, for emerge
--ask and 
emerge --pretend.  As I said, I normally use --oneshot as
well, so if I 
want to add it to the world file, I use ea2 (the 2
indicating NOT 
oneshot).  If it's already merged and I want to just add it
to the world 
file (with --noreplace), I use eadd.

Also, one of my favorite portage features is
FEATURES=buildpkg, which I 
leave enabled, so I have binary packages of everything I've
built.  
That's handy if I want to quickly try an old version or
compare say the 
default config files from one version to the next. 
(portage's packages 
are just tar.bz2-ed tarballs with a bit of extra metadata on
the end, so 
anything that can browse bz2ed tarballs can browse the
packages.  I use 
app-misc/mc, aka midnight commander, for that, and most of
the rest of my 
sysadmin type work as well.)  Thus, I have a bunch of
aliases for working 
with packages ( --usepkg and --usepkgonly) as well.  (I
reverse the -k 
and -K, since I /usually/ want --usepkgonly, -K, and thus
consider it 
normal.)

The complete list:

ep*
####################

ep 
exec emerge -pv $*

eplog
exec emerge -pvl $*

eplogsys
exec emerge -pvl system

eplogworld
exec emerge -pvl world

eppak
exec emerge -pvK $*

eppaK
exec emerge -pvk $*

epsys
exec emerge -pvNuD system

epworld
exec emerge -pvNuD world

eptree
exec emerge -pvNuDt $*

eptreeworld
exec emerge -pvNuDt world

(I've seen no need for the corresponding eptreesys, so don't
have it.)

ea*
#################

ea
exec emerge -av1 $*

ea2
exec emerge -av $*

eadd
exec emerge -avn $*

eaf
exec emerge -aNuDf $*

eafsys
exec emerge -aNuDf system

eafworld
exec emerge -aNuDf world

eapak
exec emerge -avK1 $*

eapaK
exec emerge -avk1 $*

eapak2
exec emerge -avK $*

eapaK2
exec emerge -avk $*

easys
exec emerge -avNuD system

eaworld
exec emerge -avNuD world

eatree
exec emerge -avt1 $*

eatree2
exec emerge -avt $*

eatreesys
exec emerge -avNuDt system

eatreeworld
exec emerge -avNuDt world

Then, I have a bashcompletion add-on that extends the Gentoo

bash_completion package, so I can use tab-completion on all
the above, 
and just put in a few letters of the appropriate package and
hit the tab 
key to either autocomplete or give me a listing of all the
possibilities.

What makes it great is that all I have to know is whether
I'm pretending, 
or want to actually do it (with a confirming ask, of
course).  Then I can 
hit ea<tab><tab> or ep<tab><tab> and
get a nice list of all the possible 
commands to choose from.  After choosing the command, my
normal options 
are already part of the alias, so I don't worry about adding
them, and 
can simply add the package, a few letters,
<tab><tab>, and away I go.

Also nice is that I can run a command with ep*, then hit the
up-arrow to 
recall the command, change the p to an a, and run it.  If I
don't want to 
see the prompt as I've just run the pretend, I just hit
enter twice 
instead of only once, and it continues past the prompt.

All in all, the system has been a great timesaver for me.
=8^)

-- 
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

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