About Source Mage [LWN.net]

About Source Mage

Posted Aug 4, 2005 23:31 UTC (Thu) by Duncan (guest, #6647)
In reply to: About Source Mage by komarek
Parent article: About Source Mage

> 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

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About Source Mage

Posted Aug 5, 2005 3:03 UTC (Fri) by komarek (guest, #7295) [Link]

Sorceror is a proper package management system that handles deps automatically. Perhaps I would like USE flags if I hadn't used sorceror first. But my favorite part of sorceror is the simplicity of the package descriptions (makes ebuilds look Baroque), coupled with the "modify as little as possible" philosophy.

-Paul Komarek

Gentoo FAQ

Posted Aug 11, 2005 6:47 UTC (Thu) by sethwoolley (guest, #31738) [Link]

feature-by-feature comparison (as much as that is possible).

http://www.sourcemage.org/Gentoo

Useful mostly for people using the two systems to know how the two use terms differently. We get a lot of Gentoo converts that wonder, "How do I do X that I used to do in Gentoo with Y?"

About Source Mage

Posted Aug 15, 2005 15:42 UTC (Mon) by Zenith (subscriber, #24899) [Link]

> 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.

You mean such as "emerge -avuDN world" ?
a = ask
v = verbose
u = update
D = deep
N = new use

Why make your own aliases when "man emerge" will show you shorthands for just about all the commands there are?
An oversight on your part? Or are you just tired of having to write "emerge " :-)

About Source Mage

Posted Aug 15, 2005 16:38 UTC (Mon) by komarek (guest, #7295) [Link]

Heh, that's all you need, emerge -avuDN. =-) This thread kind of makes a point about Gentoo usability. Things you want all the time are made more difficult than they should be. Other points:

o Sometimes you need -U, so that it won't undo updates you have made.
o Sometimes packages block emerge, and you have to manually remove them (even though they will be automatically replaced)
o Emerging by path is far, far easier than editing the stuff /etc/make.profile (which is not that well documented anyway). Of course, emerging by path is *deprecated* and you get *nasty warnings* when you do it, and you have to *wait 10 seconds* before it starts, just to find out that it won't automatically suck in other masked deps.

There are a lot of good reasons to use Gentoo. But I sometimes feel as though the developers must not be using it themselves, since they (as a group) continue to make decisions that make using Gentoo unpleasant.