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gentoo: how delete all config files on unmerging package (from its ebuild)

I am making my own personal package to have collection of usefull programs and configs. Main idea is to emerge this package and have system prepared for my prefferencies. Mainly it works (it simply depends on all my favourite programs), but I have two problems here:

  1. how to install USE flags, UNMASK and such before affected programs are installed?

  2. how to uninstall it (emerge --unmerge does NOT delete files in /etc, so even after uninstalling the package the USE flags (and others) are still kept - my intent is to REMOVE them, so next rebuild of world would NOT use them anymore - yes it means a lot of programs would lose some functionalities like support for some languages, support for some other programs and so on, it is desired result)

My solutions so far are:

  1. The package have some files in /etc/portage/package.*

    1.1. I emerge that package with --nodeps (so the config files are installed)

    1.2. I emerge it again without that flag (so dependencies are installed with right configuration))

  2. I create (and install) script to parse /var/db/packages for my package CONTENTS and delete all /etc/portage/something files "manually" and I have to rum this script before unmerging the package

Is there better way to do it ?

Solution

  • You just doing/understanding it wrong! (sorry :)

    First of all, instead of a metapackage (an empty ebuild that have only runtime dependencies) there is other ways:

    • use sets to describe your preferred packages. Manage your USE flags in a usual way (including per package USE if needed).
    • medium complexity solution is to write a metapackage ebuild (your current case) -- but, you can't mask/unmask USE flags anyway…
    • if you already have your overlay (obviously) -- defining your own profile would solve everything! Here you can manage everything just like you want: mask/unmask any USE flags, define what is system predefined package means for you, & etc…

    Unfortunately, I don't use Gentoo portage (and emerge) and have no idea if it's possible to have multiple additive profiles. I have my own profiles here and it works perfectly with Paludis.

    Second, never remove any configuration files (config-protected) after uninstall! There is no packages that do that, and there is a bunch of reasons for that… The main one is that user may have them modified and don't want to loose his changes. Moreover, personally I prefer to have all configs that I've ever touched to be in a dedicated VCS repo -- it wouldn't be nice, if someone, except me, would remove smth…

    Imagine a real life example: user wants to reinstall some package and he has a bunch of configuration files, he spent some time to carefully edit them. Trivial way is to uninstall and then install again -- Oops! He lost his configs! Moreover, from ebuild's POV, you have pkg_prerm and pkg_postrm functions, but both of them are called even at upgrade time (i.e. when unmerge followed by immediate merge phase). You have to be really careful to distinct that use cases… And what is more scare, having any "hardcoded" (and unique) rules in any package, you don't have any influence on them…

    So, please, never remove any config protected files, let the user to take care of them (he is the boss, not a package manager)…

    Update: If you really want to be able to remove some config-protected files, setting up your own profile looks even more better idea. You can set CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK to enforce unprotect files and/or directories. In that way you don't need to modify any ebuilds and/or write an ugly cleanup code.