@andyfraser31: "I recently posted a question about Portage wanting to downgrade mpg123 and
got a great response that explained why. Many thanks for that. I suppose I
should explain that I'm a long time Debian user who loves Gentoo and is
looking to switch from Debian unstable to Gentoo stable on my desktops.
I've been using "emerge -Duav world" recently instead of "emerge -DUav
world" after reading a recent thread with reasons not to use the -U switch
and only use stable ebuilds with Gentoo.
I now have Portage wanting to downgrade rsync from 2.6.2 back to 2.6.0.
Are the Gentoo developers getting lax and letting unstable ebuilds filter
into stable Gentoo then removing them when they realise what's happened or
is there another reason for this? This is the second downgrade in a week
and the forth in the couple of months I've been testing Gentoo in anger
(one of those was probably an error on my part though).
Maybe I'm missing something about Gentoo but I don't see how allowing/having
downgrades is a good thing. What happens if we get this with something big
like KDE, OpenOffice or Mozilla? Am I in fact the only person experiencing
this in which case I need to find out what's wrong with my system?
I know I can still use "emerge -DUav world" but if unstable packages are
getting into stable I don't feel confident enough to switch to Gentoo full
time. I know that sounds weird as I'm using Debian unstable but I built up
a lot of trust in Debian unstable over a year ago. If I've missed something
it's getting to the point where I need to find out what before I switch
full time.
Thanks for reading my thoughts.
Andy."
    @saint_abroadremove: "<quote>
I've been wanting to do this for quite some time, you have a 
documentation link?
 From 'emerge help':
      upgradeonly (-U short option)
            Updates packages, but excludes updates that would result in a
               lower version of the package being installed. SLOTs are
               considered at a basic level.
So the '-U' option simply tells portage not to downgrade packages.
The '~x86' flag, on the other hand, tells portage to consider *all* 
packages in the package tree, regardless of whether or not it has been 
marked stable by the developers. (The ebuilds start out with '~x86' and 
later get updated to 'x86' when determined to be stable.)
So if you have the '~x86' flag set you will in all likelihood end up 
installing unstable/testing packages onto your system.
Ben M."
    @annousenet: "<quote>
Here, too. It's not you.
Have a look at /etc/portage/package.keywords . You can define
per-package-keywords in there. More info on why/how you should do so and
why using -U on world is a bad idea:
<url>
Anno."
    @andyfraser31: "In alt.os.linux.gentoo, walt uttered these immortal words:
<quote>
The -U flag means upgrade only. My question is to do with why I'm getting
downgrades when I've never used the ~x86 flag anywhere and whether the
Gentoo maintainers are letting packages slip through that they shouldn't
that will cause a downgrade when it's removed.
Andy."
    @saint_abroadremove: "<quote>
Gentoo has a great community behind it, full of people with a patience 
and willingness to help. I suppose it's a maturation of the 
"hacker-culture" of old.
I'd like to see the reasons for not using -U, you have the author (or 
even better, a google link?
Gentoo isn't just a distribution, it is also a way of package 
management. Because of this, and the enormity of the number of 
applications with ebuilds, it is inevitable that errors may creep in.
As it happens, in this particular case (rsync 2.6.x), rsync 2.6.0 
through to rsync 2.6.2-r2 are actually marked as stable (and will 
probably stay that way).
However, on further inspection, here's what I found in package.mask:
# grep 'rsync' -C 1 /usr/portage/profiles/package.mask
# <email_address> (04 May 2004)
# rsync 2.6.2 seems to be behaving badly wrt our rsync servers. 
Downgrading.
 >=net-misc/rsync-2.6.2
So since rsync-2.6.2 (which is otherwise stable) interferes 'badly' with 
the Gentoo rsync servers (its main use), it has been masked so that 
installations are downgraded (automatically).
Having the ability to downgrade in Gentoo is a good feature (tm) because 
an apparently stable package in Gentoo may have serious undiscovered 
bugs. If/when these get discovered, the package can then be masked so 
that either the next or previous 'non-buggy' versions can get installed 
without concerning the users too much.
In any case, know that if the Gentoo team suggest a downgrade, it will 
be quite serious and probably for your own good. Of course, you can 
always tell them to 'shove it' and use the '-U' flag and not downgrade.
Well, in this case, unstable packages didn't get into your installation. 
Until then, you needn't worry.
In my 2 years of Gentoo, I've seen very few stable packages later marked 
as unstable. These are usually due to security alerts, or critical bugs 
in software which the Linux community as a whole thought were safe (and 
so affected many 'stable' distributions).
I hope I helped clarify things,
Ben M."
    @saint_abroadremove: "<quote>
Heh, I was gearing myself up to replying with a "that's rubbish" but you 
give a good argument :-P
(As it happens I don't actually use '-U' but I do use package.keywords 
lol :-O )
Ben M."
    @annousenet: "<quote>
I am not Earthwing, but I found the argument compelling. I saw it when
Dennis Nienh�ser pointed it out in another thread [1], and I thought the
point could be made again.
Anno.
[1] <c7382q$2bk$03$<email_address>>"
    @andyfraser31: "In alt.os.linux.gentoo, Ben Measures uttered these immortal words:
<quote>
This is a link that was posted here recently and was fairly easy to get my
hands on:
<url>
This was also discussed in the thread "Gentoo 2004.1 is out - how to
update?" which is where the link came from.
I think I (wrongly) have different tolerances for different distros. I'll
tolerate a lot of errors in Debian unstable (there aren't many at all to be
honest though) because of the nature of the distro. I'm less tolerant when
it comes to a stable distro I guess.
I thought there'd be a logical reason. Thanks for that :-)
It's a very good feature when you put it like that :-) I guess I'm more used
to distros that make downgrading hard, if not nearly impossible.
I'm running with -u ATM and letting Gentoo downgrade to see what happens. It
all works obviously but it feels very strange when Gentoo wants to
downgrade. It's something I'm not used to yet.
I think I had a panic attack :-). I had the thought that if KDE 3.2.2 got
into stable before it was ready, for example, it could cause no end of
problems if only in the time spent compiling 3.2.2 then having to compile
3.2.1 then 3.2.2 again when it's really ready.
That's probably a stupid scenario but I thought it would be worth exploring
as a worst case scenario.
I think I've been unlucky to get a few downgrades in such a short space of
time. As I said, it's a new thing for me.
You certainly did. Many thanks :-)
Andy."
    @brankob: "<quote>
AFAIK -U flag means "upgrade to last stable/unstable verison (according to
~x86 or x86 flag) but only if it means going to higher vesion number.
It is not the same as using ~xWhatever.
I use it to preserve some unstable packages that I wanted/had to emerge as
unstable during emerging world in with stable flag.
Without it, those packages would be downgraded to latest stable version. 
Regards,
Branko
PS: Why don't you read Portage user guide on <url> ? It's all
explained, and you ARE gonna need it, sooner or later... "
    @saint_abroadremove: "<quote>
Yeah, elsewhere in this thread somebody posted that link and I quickly 
had a change of heart - it makes some great points.
As it happens, I don't use '-U' unless '-p' shows up a downgrade I don't 
want, so it doesn't really apply. However, I have been using 
package.keywords more and more so I may as well use it for this too. :-P
Ben M."
    @spam: "So anyway, it was like, 01:35 CEST May 09 2004, you know? Oh, and, yeah,
walt was all like, "Dude,
<quote>
Ditto.
Alternatively, compile a kernel without devfs support. Either way,
just don't forget to follow the instructions in the link above and
create the console and null device nodes and it should work fine.
Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana.      Perth -> *
 02:47:59 up 20:57,  4 users,  load average: 2.06, 2.10, 1.83
$ cat /dev/bollocks                      Registered Linux user #261729
exploit enterprise channels"
    @saint_abroadremove: "<quote>
Quality, cheers for the link (can't see how I didn't see that...).
I been thinking for quite some time that devfs was deficient, it'll be 
nice to get a replacement in.
Ben M."
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