On Wed, Nov 26, 2003 at 07:41:25PM -0500, Chris Bare wrote:
> These are the packages that I would merge, in order:
>
> Calculating world dependencies ...done!
> [ebuild U ] media-libs/alsa-lib-0.9.8 [0.9.2]
> [ebuild N ] media-sound/alsa-driver-0.9.8
> [ebuild U ] media-sound/alsa-utils-0.9.8 [0.9.2]
> [ebuild N ] x11-libs/lesstif-0.93.40
> [ebuild U ] media-libs/alsa-oss-0.9.8 [0.9.1]
> [ebuild N ] media-libs/speex-1.0
> [ebuild U ] media-libs/xine-lib-1_rc2 [1_beta12]
>
> I don't understand why alsa driver is listed as N when I definately have it
> installed:
>
> oberon root # qpkg -i alsa-driver
> media-sound/alsa-driver-0.9.2 *
That's because of the slot system, and a change in how slots are
handled in some cases.
One of the problems Gentoo has had was the complaint that whenever you
installed a new kernel, any attempt to recompile the kernel modules for
that kernel would usually result in the kernel modules for the old kernel
being removed. (Most people, I expect, run with the autoclean option.)
In order to fix that, a lot of the more recent ebuilds of kernel modules
have had the 'SLOT' variable set to ${KV}, the kernel version. That way,
you can have the same package installed for multiple kernels.
I expect the 'N' there is a result of this slot system. Previous ALSA
driver ebuilds used '0.9' as the SLOT number (so you could have 0.9 and 0.5
installed at once). So because this is going in a different slot, emerge
thinks it's not removing the original, thus, it's a 'new' install and not
an 'upgrade'. The exact meaning of those display flags having been changed
due to the confusion engendered when a program in a different slot, like
gkrellm 1.2.13, called itself an 'upgrade' to the installed gkrellm 2.1.20.
Anyway, this is an artifact of the changeover. Install the new
alsa-driver, manually remove the old alsa-driver with
'emerge unmerge media-sound/alsa-driver-0.9.2', and since alsa-driver is
now slotted by the kernel version, it should work more or less as expected
from now on.
I consider this a good change; it's just unfortunate that it wasn't in
there from the beginning, so we get these switchover problems.
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