When to use Portage/Emerge

[almigi]

I know that ideally you should stick to one package manager to minimize conflicts and system breakage. For most SL users, that would probably be Entropy. However, is there a best practice as to when to use Portage vs Entropy?

Based on what I'm reading in the forums and wiki, this is what I think. Basically I'm just looking for feedback from more exerpeinced users to know if my "method" of managing my system works.

Basically, I use Entropy for everything possible. For world updates, and every time I want to install a program I search Entropy first.

For Portage, I only use it if I need something that's not in Entropy. I never use Portage for system/world updates.

If there is an application already installed on my system, and a new version is released with bugfixes or features I want, I wait for that program to be installed in Entropy. If, after awhile, I noticed that the Entropy version isn't being updated (or the updated version is only in branch 5) but the updated version is in Portage, then I use Entropy to remove the software from my computer and I use Portage to reinstall the newer version.

Again, am I using the package managers in a recommended fashion or is there a better way of doing things?

[Fitzcarraldo]

Sounds reasonable enough. If you haven't already done it, you might want to enable ignore-spm-downgrades in /etc/entropy/client.conf (see Re: how to make equo world ignore packages?). Actually I usually don't bother with the procedure in your last sentence; I just install the newer version using Portage, although I don't see anything wrong with what you're doing.

Maybe I'm lucky, but I've had very little trouble to date mixing Portage and Entropy; I usually use the 'pretend' or 'ask' switches to keep an eye on what they want to change, before actually performing the operation for real.

Having the two package managers can be quite handy: sometimes I've broken something by installing a package using Portage and fixed the problem by re-installing it using Entropy (and, once or twice, vice versa).