[NTLUG:Discuss] Debian

[Spicerun]

Ralph Green, Jr. wrote:

>Howdy,
>  Please take this as a real question about Gentoo.  I am not attacking
>it.  I just want to see if the problem I had is still there.
>  
>
No problem, It is a valid question.

>  About 2 years ago, I set up a Gentoo system and kept it going for
>about 3 months.  I don't remember the exact term, but the problem I had
>was that every time I went to do updates, a number of packages were
>embargoed, or something like that.  They were mark as not being ready
>for upgrade and the problem always cascaded to dependent packages.  I
>will say the machine (a Celeron 800 on a 815 chipset) ran faster on
>Gentoo than how I set it up before that.  I decided it was not worth the
>hassle of trying to figure out those embargoed(or whatever it was
>called) portages each time I updated.
>  
>
Admittedly Gentoo could have made this easier IMO....I call these the 
Blocker packages, and I run into them too.  For example, some Gnome-2.8 
packages blocked some Gnome-2.10 packages when I was updating.  In those 
cases, all I usually had to do is to execute the command 'emerge -C 
offending_program' and that removed the program(s) doing the blocking on 
the update, leaving me free to update, and the packages removed were 
replaced by the updated packages when updating.

Gentoo now has a sdcond way to clear the block, which is to just put the 
program name into a file called 'package.unmask'.  A filename in the 
file will also clear the blocking on that package, although I would only 
recommend that for programs that aren't blocking the updating, but 
programs you still want to obtain.  However, in that case, I find most 
times that the package really isn't ready which means in most cases, it 
won't even compile/install properly on your system (Gentoo is very good 
about not installing the package if an Error was encountered in building 
the package).  I will typically pull the program down from the author, 
compile it myself, and tell the portage system that I've provided the 
package so that it won't try to update/block the package through its 
system (and, in fact, use the package you've provided).

> Has this gotten any better?
>  
>
I think it definitely has gotten better from 2 years ago, but I won't 
lie to you and tell you that it is easiest thing in the world to deal 
with.  OTOH, I think it is far from being difficult.  If you know the 
'emerge -C xxx' trick, it isn't bad.  I'll tell you another trick that 
has made my life very easy.....Since not all packages will build, 
causing the update to stop with an error (Especially since I use the 
unstable version of Gentoo), the 'emerge --skipfirst --resume' command 
is wonderful to skip the bad package and continue with updating 
according to the list.  Also, Gentoo's documentation continues to be 
Excellent IMO in explaining how to install and handle to portage system.