Bug 433704 – [PATCH] DateSet class for packages emerged before/after a specified date

• Product: Portage Development
• Status: RESOLVED FIXED

[Description Martin Väth 2012-09-02 18:51:03 UTC]

Created attachment 322766 [details, diff]
Patch for DateSet class; instructions/example how to use it

It would be useful to have a @magic-set in portage
which contains all installed packages which were
emerged before/after a specified "critical" date.

This date can e.g. be the date of a sys-libs/glibc update
(if for some reasons you have to revert it, you need to
reemerge all packages compiled afterwards) or the date
of a major sys-devel/gcc upgrade (if after a while you
want to make sure that all packages are reemerged
with the latest major version).

Following a suggestion of genone in
http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-903444.html
I have written a corresponding DateSet class which is similar
to the AgeSet class and allows to specify corresponding sets.
Details/Examples how to use it are described in the first section
of the attached patch.

The idea is that you specify the date by using exactly one
of the following four options:

"seconds" (seconds since epoch)
"date" (date in a time.strptime format which you
        can specify with "dateformat"; default is %x %X)
"package" (installation time of the specified atom)
"filestamp" (mtime of the specified file or directory)

(It would be easily possible to include also "age" in this list
to merge the functionality with the existing AgeSet class.)

Personally, I think that the "filestamp" option is the most convenient,
since the user can then simple touch a certain file he specified
when he knows that he will start a "critical" emerge.
Note that in contrast to e.g. "package = sys-devel/gcc:4.7", the user
has in this way full control whether he means the date of the *first*
corresponding upgrade of gcc:4.7 or the date of the last minor
version upgrade.

Of course, it would be even more convenient, if there would exist
a class which specifies "all packages emerged while another gcc-version
than gcc:4.7 was active", but since the gcc version is not stored in
/var/db, such a set cannot be built with current portage.

[Comment 1 Zac Medico 2012-09-02 20:20:19 UTC]

Thanks, this is in git:

http://git.overlays.gentoo.org/gitweb/?p=proj/portage.git;a=commit;h=ce16249658fa99a8b2051a19091b85f712f5dac1

[Comment 2 Zac Medico 2012-09-03 00:04:34 UTC]

This is fixed in 2.2.0_alpha124.