Gentoo

[Luke-Jr]

On Sunday 07 January 2007 18:48, Oren Beck wrote:
> Is there any automation of the install/maintain operations that "just plain
> works" ?

In general, most stuff does just plain work. The only manual operation 
required in regular use is merging configuration files when they change. 
There is a tool to assist in this by diffing the current and new 
configurations.

> is there any method of directing an update to"roll back"
> to the last stable pre-update state if an update breaks?

If an update won't build, it will never be installed. There is a relatively 
new function in ebuilds for including tests that can be enabled. In this 
case, the new version will be tested before it is ever installed. If there 
are no tests available, or you have them disabled (default, as many tests are 
very time consuming and may add dependencies), your computer has no automated 
way to determine if the new version works or not. You can usually downgrade 
back to an old version manually, and I recommend using Subversion on /etc to 
rollback configuration changes. I always enable the "buildpkg" feature by 
default-- this tells Portage to make binary packages of everything you 
install. This way, you can use the -k switch with emerge to avoid a recompile 
time should you need to downgrade something.