Dale posted on Sun, 18 Dec 2011 22:48:27 -0600 as excerpted:
> Ulrich Mueller wrote:
>> On Sun, 18 Dec 2011, Alexandre Rostovtsev wrote:
>>> The problem is that ($PN, $CATEGORY) pairs are not unique.
>> Thinking about it a little more, I believe that ${CATEGORY} shouldn't
>> appear anywhere in the path of installed files, for the following
>> reasons:
>>
>> 1. Users may not know the category of a package
> I like the logic in #1 as a user. What if two packages have the same
> name but different categories tho? It is rare but I do run into this
> from time to time. I try to emerge something but am informed by emerge
> that I have to include the category for emerge to know exactly which
> package I want installed.
At present that's semi-accounted-for by including version-revision.
Luckily, $PN clashes don't often have the same versions installed at the
same time, so including it helps avoid clashes on $PN only. The proposal
removes version-revision, which would ordinarily be good, but in the
context of $PN clashes causes problems.
I believe that's the rock upon which most previous similar proposals have
foundered.
> I do agree that docs are sometimes hard to find. The only way I have
> any success is equery files <package name> then see where it put them or
> if there is none to find.
For docs, I used to have problems too, but it's been awhile, I think
because I've learned to work with the system, in this case, tab-
completion (the next point), not against it. I do sometimes use equery
files or equery belongs to find where a package put files, but seldom for
docs in the docdir, since I know where to look and can tab-complete for
them. But for what manpages a package includes, certainly, and over the
years I've found a number of commands I didn't know about, that way. =:^)
>> 2. It doesn't play well with bash completion. When searching for
>> documentation of a specific package (and only knowing PN), one can
>> currently type the pathname up to PN and press tab which will
>> complete PVR. With CATEGORY _before_ PN this would no longer work.
I often find myself doing equery list, simply to find the category, as
when reporting bugs or checking to see which binpkg versions I still have
around, etc. But the various package trees (ebuild, binpkg, installed-
db) are on filesystems that aren't normally mounted unless I'm working on
them, on mds that likewise aren't normally assembled, and having to
assemble an md and mount a filesystem just to be able to do an equery
list, so I can lookup a doc of a package that's under some category name
I don't remember, just because someone broke the previously working bash-
completion lookup method...
Very much ungood!
>> 3. CATEGORY and SLOT are Gentoo specific [and n]either of them should
>> appear in the directory structure of installed packages.
>> Leave things as they are. It's not perfect, but IMHO your approach
>> would create at least as many problems as it would solve.
Indeed.
If a method allowing permanent bookmarking is desired, scripts that
create and update a tree of symlinks and/or uses existing portage phase
hooks has already been mentioned. Someone can package such a script and
as with any other package, people that want/need it can emerge and run it
as necessary, without getting into the quagmire of confusing category
names, broken tab-completion and potential doc-file collisions that this
proposal is opening up.
--
Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman
