By default, updating my system takes me quite a while as I end up reading the output of every -vp or -vpuD line-by-line. When you have package lists that get long and scroll off the screen this gets harder and harder to track. So I propose this: a Diff switch of sorts. Passing this ones takes a snapshot of the current state of what is passed (world|system|atom) and compares it to the last and only prints the difference (in color of course!) Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. emerge -vpuD --diff world (prints 85 packages and takes first snapshot) 2. Make USE flag changes per package as necessary 3. emerve -vpuD --diff world (prints 106 packages and compares to first snapshot, only print the 21 packages different) I happily open this for discussion as well and look forward to hearing what people have to say about this.
Here is an example of the expected output: (be advised, this is simulated based on what I see in my head, I have done no work to actually produce these results) stewie ~ # emerge -vp --diff irssi These are the packages that would be merged, in order: Calculating dependencies... done! [ebuild N ] net-irc/irssi-0.8.15 USE="ipv6 perl -ssl -socks5" 927 kB Total: 2 packages (1 new, 1 reinstall), Size of downloads: 4,611 kB stewie ~ # echo =net/irssi-0.8.15 ssl >>/etc/portage/package.use/irssi stewie ~ # emerge -vp --diff irssi These are the packages that would be merged, in order: Calculating dependencies... done! [ebuild N ] dev-libs/openssl-0.9.8o USE="gmp sse2 zlib -bindist -kerberos -test" 3,685 kB *** WARNING *** This is a DIFF output of your emerge process. To see full list drop '--diff' from your list of used switches. (Or something like this)
I don't imagine that many people would be interested in an option like this. In the rare cases when something like this is needed, it's not too difficult to do it manually with shell commands.
(In reply to comment #2) > I don't imagine that many people would be interested in an option like this. In > the rare cases when something like this is needed, it's not too difficult to do > it manually with shell commands. > That very well may be the case for thoes that know how too and that's great for them. But what about thoes that don't know how to do that with a shell command? To be honest, I don't know how. I am sure I could learn but that is beyond the scope of what my Gentoo server does (as a simple file/local dns server). Thats where I thought this command/switch would come into play.
