On Mon, 2004-10-18 at 08:58 +1300, Daniel Lawson wrote:
Of course, these only work for packages the distribution includes - you might still have to download sourcecode and compile and install manually.
Since gentoo is a source based distro (when you emerge a package, portage downloads and compiles the source for you), it is very easy to create your own ebuild (the gentoo package tyoe) if there is a package you want that's not in one of the repositories, or you want a newer bleeding edge version than currently in the repository, emerge also has a swith 'a' which can replace 'p'. When you use 'emerge -up package-name | world | system', portage calculates dependencies, tells you what it would emerge, then exits. If you decide you want to go ahead, you have to issue an emerge command again, and wait again for dependency calculation, which could take a while. The 'a' flag is like 'p' for pretend, but it has a 'do you want me to go ahead?' type of question, instead of exiting after output. Doing it on my system now looks like this (after not having updated for a while - 'D' stands for deep: upgrade all dependencies as well): jgibbs root # emerge -uDa world These are the packages that I would merge, in order: Calculating world dependencies ...done! [ebuild U ] sys-apps/shadow-4.0.4.1-r4 [4.0.4.1-r3] [ebuild U ] x11-misc/ttmkfdir-3.0.9-r2 [3.0.9-r1] [ebuild U ] x11-base/xorg-x11-6.8.0-r1 [6.7.0-r2] [ebuild U ] x11-terms/xterm-196 [191] [ebuild U ] dev-lang/python-2.3.4 [2.3.3-r1] [ebuild N ] sys-kernel/gentoo-dev-sources-2.6.8-r10 [ebuild U ] media-libs/tiff-3.6.1-r2 [3.5.7-r1] [ebuild U ] kde-base/kdebase-3.3.1 [3.3.0] [ebuild U ] kde-base/kdemultimedia-3.3.1 [3.3.0] [ebuild U ] media-libs/t1lib-5.0.1 [5.0.0-r2] [ebuild U ] app-text/xpdf-3.00-r2 [2.03] [ebuild U ] kde-base/kdegraphics-3.3.1 [3.3.0] [ebuild U ] kde-base/kdenetwork-3.3.1 [3.3.0] [ebuild U ] app-crypt/gpgme-1.0.0-r3 [1.0.0] [ebuild U ] kde-base/kdepim-3.3.1 [3.3.0-r1] [ebuild U ] kde-base/kdeaddons-3.3.1 [3.3.0] [ebuild U ] kde-base/kdeartwork-3.3.1 [3.3.0] [ebuild U ] kde-base/kdeadmin-3.3.1 [3.3.0] [ebuild U ] app-office/openoffice-1.1.3 [1.1.2] [ebuild U ] kde-base/kdeutils-3.3.1 [3.3.0] Do you want me to merge these packages? [Yes/No] ... There are advantages and disadvantages to all distros, for gentoo you have to wait for source packages to compile. There is no installer for it either (but great docs). I've found I was truly happy only with a linux distro when I found the balance that suited me best, which is currently gentoo. I've learnt so much using it, and enjoy it's powerful package management. Joseph.