Just curious, but we used to tell people to run "emerge -u world" after stage3 and before the kernel on all networked installs. What happened to this? We probably also need to mention revdep-rebuild, python-updater, perl-cleaner, and fix_libtool_files.sh, as all of these could be required. Basically, we're leaving systems in a half-working state as stages get older. A good example is this: Use a stage3 tarball and follow the Handbook. Once you boot your system, emerge gnome. It will fail on intltool, due to XML::Parser. checking for XML::Parser... configure: error: XML::Parser perl module is required for intltool !!! Please attach the config.log to your bug report: !!! /var/tmp/portage/intltool-0.34.1/work/intltool-0.34.1/config.log !!! ERROR: dev-util/intltool-0.34.1 failed. Now, if emerge -u world and perl-cleaner modules had been run before the user tried to "emerge gnome" then we would have had no issues.
I forgot to mention that this should only be necessary after a stage3 tarball is used, not when coming from stage1 or stage2.
More info: This would only affect a user doing a stage3 *networked* installation. Users doing a stage3 networkless would be unaffected by this, as the tree would not have changed. Stage1 and stage2 users are not affected because their entire base system is built against their current portage tree, rather than the release tree.
I disagree. One can very well update his system (--sync and -u world) after a succesfull installation of Gentoo. Updating is no requirement during the installation. The second part of the Gentoo Handbook explains how to use Portage for the various tasks. One should really read this.
Well, we are currently having issues in testing where one uses my example. The problem is that the perl version has changed and causes the perl modules to not be found. This *is* a bug and is causing failures. I don't really like telling users to perform an update, either, but there's definitely situations where it is necessary to get a proper system. Perhaps simply adding something to the end of the installation section of the Handbook recommending users perform a world update would be sufficient?
In the "Where to go from here", there is a paragraph: You should definitely take a look at the next part of the Gentoo Handbook entitled Working with Gentoo which explains how to keep your software up to date, how to install more software, what USE flags are, how the Gentoo Init system works, etc.
I think the wording needs to be stronger than that, personally. Like I said, I'm seeing reports of users getting broken systems. I think it should have something more along the lines of: "You will definitely want to update your system to the latest versions of your installed software. Instructions are in the next part of the Gentoo Handbook entitled Working with Gentoo which explains how to keep your software up to date, how to install more software, what USE flags are, how the Gentoo Init system works, etc." The problem is that the user now has a "system" that was built against a specific snapshot, while newer packages build against a newer snapshot. This causes issues if anything in "system" that requires manual intervention has been updated, such as perl, gcc, or python.
There will always be issues with the installation. If the problems you're seeing come from the installation of more recent ebuilds wrt the packages of the system; we should recommend to run "emerge --emptytree world" every time the user has "emerge --sync"ed. Yes I'm overreacting here, but users who don't update their system anyway are screwed. I really don't see the need to put this more in the Gentoo Handbook than it is today. If we would put an "emerge -uD world" in the installation instructions, we're quite far away since that might trigger more problems, some temporary (Portage tree brokeness), some permanent (ebuilds that require manual interaction). It is impossible to document every possible item in the Handbook in its current form: you'll need to rewrite the Handbook so it focuses on Gentoo management and only at the end on Gentoo installations. Putting a stronger wording at the end won't do much either - every Gentoo user searches for the "emerge --update world" command quite soon after his succesful installation.
