Bug 488972 – sys-apps/portage: add --write-timestamp option for "egencache --update" to create metadata/timestamp.chk

• Product: Portage Development
• Status: RESOLVED FIXED

[Description Nikoli 2013-10-22 07:19:28 UTC]

Current portage git has code only for checking metadata/timestamp.chk, but not for creating it, the latter is not documented anywhere.

I have rsync overlay, tried using 'emerge --sync' for updating it, created file /etc/portage/repos.conf/nikoli.conf:
[nikoli]
location = /var/lib/layman/nikoli/
sync-type = rsync
sync-uri = rsync://myserver/portage-overlay

emerge --sync failed with this error:
>>> Synchronization of repository 'nikoli' located in '/var/lib/layman/nikoli'...
>>> Starting rsync with rsync://someip/portage-overlay...
receiving incremental file list
rsync: link_stat "/metadata/timestamp.chk" (in portage-overlay) failed: No such file or directory (2)

I use this command for updating metadata in repo:
egencache --repo=nikoli --update --rsync --update-use-local-desc --jobs="$((1+$(grep -c '^processor' /proc/cpuinfo)))"

It does not create 'metadata/timestamp*'. After 'touch metadata/timestamp.chk' 'emerge --sync' started to work, but it is workaround, not solution. Please fix egencache and update https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Overlay

[Comment 1 Sebastian Luther (few) 2013-11-30 13:33:31 UTC]

This is fixed in git:

http://git.overlays.gentoo.org/gitweb/?p=proj/portage.git;a=commit;h=c145e3cfcc016694f76488c21caaae37e3f3664e

[Comment 2 Brian Dolbec (RETIRED) 2014-01-06 00:39:03 UTC]

Released in sys-apps/portage-2.2.8.

[Comment 3 Nikoli 2015-02-18 12:54:08 UTC]

Thanks, but why add separate option instead of changing behaviour of '--rsync'?

[Comment 4 Zac Medico 2015-02-18 15:51:23 UTC]

The timestamp could be useful with protocols other than rsync.

We can deprecate the --rsync option, because it was a workaround for an older cache format that should not be used anymore (it is not needed for the md5-dict/md5-cache format).