About Source Mage

Posted Aug 4, 2005 23:31 UTC (Thu) by Duncan (guest, #6647) [Link]

> Gentoo's USE flags come straight from hell[.]

Interesting comment, particularly when Gentoo is being compared to a
distribution that calls its package manager "sorcery", and "casts spells"
to install stuff. In context, therefore, it would seem to be a
compliment. =8^)

Honestly, I've never used ufed so can't speak to it, but after reading the
Gentoo Handbook (all sections, not just installation), and using the
use.desc descriptions to help me set up my USE flags at initial install,
I've had no issues with USE flags. They've functioned just fine, here.
Of course, I quickly set up aliases for emerge --verbose --pretend (and
--ask), as ea (and ep), with corresponding --update --deep world aliases,
plus others, but that's just because I'm lazy and don't want to type out
the long forms. I suppose most folks come up with similar command line
shortcuts, customized to the way they work, in time. Anyway, thru my
shortcuts, I always use pretend or ask, to see what portage is going to
do, before I let it proceed, but that's only common sense, and I haven't
had any problems with it.

...

Back to Source Mage... the article doesn't answer one question. Is
Sorcery a "package manager" like Red Hat's RPM, in terms of dependencies,
or like Gentoo's portage? That is, does it just tell you what's missing
and leave you in dependency hell, or does it actually figure out the best
package that fills the dependency and install it as part of the
installation of the requested package?

Duncan