On 5/19/05, Neil Bothwick <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On Thu, May 19, 2005 3:37 pm, Philip Webb said: > > 050519 Neil Bothwick wrote: > > >> What is the world file > >> if not a home made list of the packages you have installed? > > > > it's not home-made, it's system-made: > > It is home made in that only files I specify to be included in it, by > emerging them directly, are. > > > anything you emerge (apart from dependencies) without '--oneshot'. > > if you update a pkg which you've installed to support something else > > -- Qt would be a good example -- , it gets dumped in 'world', > > unless you add '--oneshot'. then if you delete eg KDE , > > Qt remains in 'world' & keeps getting remerged without a good reason. > > If a package is merged as a dependency, it will be updated by "emerge > world -uavDN", so it won't be added to the world file. There is never a > need to merge a dependency manually. > > > i made a file using 'qpkg -I' & keep it upto-date by hand with Vim > > whenever i add/remove/update a pkg: that way i know exactly what's there > > & whether they're 'W'orld, 'S'ystem or [for KDE] (i mark them > > individually). > > But qpkg -I does list all installed packages, whereas a world file should > never list dependencies, unless you do something wrong. > > > i really don't understand why 'world' is set up the way it is: > > it's contrary to the fundamental principle of Gentoo, > > which is that the user decides what s/he has installed in their box. > > I don't understand what your complaint is. world should only contain what > you have decided to install on your box. If it doesn't, you have somehow > messed up world, so you may as well edit this as create a new file. >
I sort of took his comments a little differently - not so much as a complaint. With all the work I've done on my three home systems so far I've come to both respect the way the system works (world file and all) but also to see that there are choices that aren't so obvious to me. For instance every system I run uses X, but on every system I've built I emerged X11 before I emerged whatever environment I was going to run. (fluxbox or Gnome, but also I've tried out xfce, kde, etc.) So, should xorg-x11 be in my world file? It is if I emerge it first, but it's not (I think) if I build the machine and the first emerge I kick off is emerge gnome. I've now removed xorg-x11 from my world file since I will never remove it and will always have something on the system that requires X. On the other hand Qt is an interesting one also. I don't think I've ever ran a system for very long that didn't need it for at least 1 or 2 apps. (Home recording studio apps - lots are kde based.) However when I have to build Qt it takes so long that I don't want to make a mistake and remove it and then have to build it again. In this case I've purposely added Qt to my world file so that it won't go away by mistake. I like that I have this level of control, but I also see the world file as a little bit fragile, sort of like etc-update. I appreciate that I can build it by hand, if I choose, and keep my machine pretty close to where I think optimum is for me. cheers, Mark -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
