[revdep-rebuild] vs [emerge -uD world] ??

[qbic2005]

Hi boys & girls

I'm a happy gentoo user for (i think) 6 years now and I like gentoo for it's flexibility, options for customization and I learned a lot about linux. Some other distro's smile at me but once I use them for a week or so, I get bored and return happily to gentoo. (yes I have the irresistible need to screw up my system and anything else I can get my hands on )

My problem is that I rebuild over 500 packages through [revdep-rebuild] and [emerge update Deep world] some 3 months ago, because I screwed something up. Now with a system that was fully updated 3 months ago, I pulled in a package yesterday, which needed an upgrade from (what I call) a core lib which I obviously did ... a (quick) revdep-rebuild shows me that I will have to recompile/upgrade 359 packages -- Oh Fun! -- and this number is growing since a large amount of packages is obsolete yet again, which means I have to [emerge update Deep world] to get everything going -- yet again!

I will definitely stay with gentoo, but what is going wrong?
* Can I avoid these rebuilds (and still install new and crazy things)?
* Would it help to do a weekly system update? (I guess not )
* Did I somehow miss the right solution?
* Or is it because it has been pretty quit around gentoo for some years and that we are getting a boost in development and maintenance now? (which is actually a good thing )
* ...

My initial system was installed 4 years ago and yes I have a lots of 'unstable' and 'testing' packages as well as some overlay's and other stuff installed.
Will a fresh install free me from this problem for at least some time?

Thanks for reading and many thanks for posting

[wim-x]

hey qbic2005,

of course you can always screw up your system in such a way that you need to rebuild a lot. However, when asked for a revdep-rebuild I always check if I really need the packages I was asked to emerge again. Some could be leftover dependencies from previously unmerged packages. I simply check each doubtful package with a:

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equery depends <package>

and check each resulting dependency (if any) again if in doubt. When none of them are needed, they can be unmerged, keeping your system clean.

regards, Wim

[qbic2005]

Thanks for the tip, with well over 300 broken decency's I don't really see it as an option and as a matter of fact, most stuff is effectively broken in the mean while (or at least a part of it).
--It all started out with libxcb which needed upgrading and which took down all the rest. (I know, there is a guide, I followed it...)--

But if it is for a smaller number of packages, it's quite a nice idea actually, because cleaning out the whole depency stuff at once is not obvious

[Mike Hunt]

Please post your emerge --info

[pigeon768]

* Would it help to do a weekly system update? (I guess not )

Yes. Gentoo honestly kinda sucks when it comes to updating a system that hasn't been updated in months. The trouble is that if a core library gets updated, you'll often need to rebuild any packages that depend on it.

In your case, do the following:

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emerge -uNDav world
emerge --depclean -a                     **check to see it doesn't rid of anything you need. If it does, manually emerge the package
revdep-rebuild

You should be good to go.

Also, try unmasking portage-2.2, and then do an 'emerge -e world'. Yes, it will take a while, but afterward you shouldn't need revdep-rebuild but rarely. It keeps a list of which libraries each executable depends on, and when you upgrade a core library that changes the ABI it will keep the old library, and prompt you to 'emerge @preserved-rebuild' which will rebuild anything that depends on the library that it's trying to delete. It will only delete the library after the other packages have been rebuilt, so you still have a working system that whole time.

[tuam]

It all started out with libxcb which needed upgrading and which took down all the rest. (I know, there is a guide, I followed it...)

Some other update might be like that. I suggest that you really read the elogs - learned that the hard way, too - and try lafilefixer again.

FF,

Daniel

[qbic2005]

@pigeon768
The portage2.2 idea is worth giving a try I see I still have a lot of learning to do.

Just asked a collegue what he thought about auto update and he was pro, he tried both update deep and just normal update world for some time and had the best result with deep.
I just came up with the genius idea to configure the bios for an autostart once a week to do a backup and an sync deep. -- handsfree -- till it breakes -- I like it already

@Mike Hunt
Do you want that weekly? (just kidding) Thanks for the attention, but I don't think it is going to cure my case.

@tuam
I read elogs for 6 years now and however they are good bed time lecture, I'm getting quite bored reading the same stuff every few weeks

[d2_racing]

Updating a Gentoo only once a month can be pretty hard.

Are you using the ~arch or the stable branch ?

[Mike Hunt]

but I don't think it is going to cure my case.

Maybe not, but if we could see what kind of setup you have then we could explain more about the volume of updates. Not all setups require as many updates.

A full unstable system with both KDE and Gnome will require the most, and need updating virtually daily.
A stable Gentoo with maybe little more than FVWM would only really need weekly updating at the very most.

Of course if there are any issues during the --pretend phase of emerge, it's always better to check in here before proceeding, just in case.

Finally, it is always a very good idea to run revdep-rebuild and emerge --depclean -av after each and every world update.

[d2_racing]

I always run :

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# revdep-rebuild -i

just to be sure.

[monsm]

Not sure if this was said.

Its not a matter of emerge -DNuv world VS revdep-rebuild

You will need both. I just finished an update, first one for 6 weeks. "emerge -DNuv world" did 255 packages. One of the deep down libraries got updated, so the subsequent revdep-rebuild did another 100+ packes.

Thats just how it is. It is easier if you do it more often, but with reasonably good hardware it isn't so bad. Just leave it to run over night.

Mons

[qbic2005]

@Mike Hunt
Thanks for the tips, I'll surely slot these commands somewhere in the script.

@d2_racing
Yep, but that is just to clean out revdep-rebuild, that doesn't solve anything, it just makes sure u don't have to do unnecessary rebuilds.


~arch for plenty of packages, whatever suites me actually, but not the entire system. Weekly will have to do
I used to only update world once it gets broken, about every four to six months currently.

[aguettinger]

Strange. Can't complain on my side. I run amd64 desktop stable (-kde) and do weekly emerge --newuse --deep word followed by emerge -av --depclean and revdep-rebuild rebuilt maybe ~20 packages in total in the last 12 months or so. 90% of the time it just reports everything is ok.

[qbic2005]

@aguettinger
Did you use any kind of script/setup/guide to set up the auto update would be welcome, just to have a starting point

thanks

[rtomek]

You don't need daily or weekly updates with gentoo, your system will run fine. It's just that if you do the weekly updates, it makes each successive update that much quicker.

Just make sure you run
emerge -auvDN world
emerge --depclean
revdep-rebuild
to update rather than just the first step and you should be fine. It might take a couple hours at one time instead of a couple of minutes every day but your system should still be running with all of the updates. If it's not working properly, just do an emerge -e world overnight and it will be running for sure.

[d2_racing]

For my concern, I always run this :

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# eix-sync
# emerge -auDNv world
# dispatch-conf
# revdep-rebuild -i
# emerge -p --depclean
# eclean-dist -id