Version numbers in Gentoo?

[CaptainPinko]

i'm looking into trying gentoo on an old box that i have (its ancient and i figure it needs all the effiency it can get!) i notice something on the gentoo site about live cd 1.4rc2 and 1.4rc4 and so on... why would gentoo need version numbers if i downloads all the newest sources straight from the web? if something needed to be upgraded woulndn't they just emerge the changes?

[sharth]

theoretically yeah, i guess that would work.

however, bug fixes on the cd itself, and just updates of the packages. (do you really want to compile gcc and glibc twice, thrice on lfs (shudder)?

[CaptainPinko]

ah, so basically its for things that would be too inconvient to rebuild? but wouldn't you want your gcc optimized for your system so it would compile faster? i think i'm still missing something here...

[sharth]

the gcc comment was this. I forget exactly how gentoo works, but i believe that some of the packages are on the cd. atleast on the post stage 1 cds. Those cds would have to have some of their components updated as time goes on.

I'm still not exactly sure whats even on the gentoo cds :) Bug fixes for what is on the cd would go in though.

[bammbamm808]

For a base system, the evolving LiveCD's are simply the environment you use to boot and compile the base system. They serve the same function as the linux install you use to do your LFS, except that they have Portage and are Gentoo-savvy. They undergo regular tweaking and bugfixes.

By regularly doing:

emerge sync
emerge -u world

You will keep your installed packages current with whatever is in the Portage tree. I'm running my 'emerge -u world' right now.