I have some systems that hadnt been updated since the end of last year. Updating from portage 2.0.43 leads to a deadlock: 1. portage 2.0.47 depends on app-shells/bash 2. my machines have sys-apps/bash installed, but not app-shell/bash 3. the ebuild for app-shell/bash uses the epatch function, not present in the older portage. Breaking the deadlock in this case is easy, but I think it demonstrates a more general problem. I believe gentoo should make a promise that it is always possible to emerge the current development tools using tools that were emerged in the previous x months. I'm not sure what x should be, but I had expected it to be longer than 5.
since 2.0.47 portage has autonotification if a new stable version is available could we close this ?
It's is workable. You just have to use a rescue tarball if you drift too far behind.
