Package management in Gentoo Linux [LWN.net]

Package management in Gentoo Linux

Posted Jul 8, 2007 20:29 UTC (Sun) by dirtyepic (subscriber, #30178)
In reply to: Package management in Gentoo Linux by cventers
Parent article: Package management in Gentoo Linux

3. Transactional upgrades. If you want to upgrade a slew of software, merge all the files into a temporary holding directory and wait until all packages and their dependencies have successfully compiled before updating the live system. Having to chase down build failures in the middle of an "emerge", when your system is currently in a broken state, is irritating.

Interesting idea, but I'm not sure how that would work or why introducing massive changes to the system all at once rather than incrementally would help anything. Would you link to the system libraries or to the ones you've just built in the holding area? What happens when those libraries are suddenly relocated or overwritten?

The best way to handle updating is one package at a time. If something breaks, then you only have to deal with that package. Blindly running emerge world is usually what gets people into trouble in the first place.

4. A better etc-update. The one that is included should be taken out back and shot :P

I don't honestly know why it's still around and the default. dispatch-conf forever.

(Log in to post comments)

Package management in Gentoo Linux

Posted Jul 10, 2007 16:00 UTC (Tue) by rise (guest, #5045) [Link]

If you're not using static binaries anywhere in the process (a big if) a CheckInstall/installwatch-style solution might work. Basically it uses a library preload to catch all file accesses and redirect them to a temporary area while overlaying the results over the actual filesystem. Then it bundles up all the changes it saw into a package. This is a nice but sub-optimal solution for software lacking true packages, though I use it heavily to make random source-compiled software trackable and uninstallable. However it should work nicely for transactions - just delay committing the overlay until the process completes properly.