"These packages are not supposed to be merged directly"

[eccerr0r]

I got this warning somehow, recently, on an old machine

[steveL]

If you're not using FEATURES=buildpkg I'd make a qpkg of it (see man q and man qpkg, both from portage-utils), then uninstall it and start again with a fresh crossdev install (after putting 'buildpkg' in FEATURES if I were you). If it's been that long, I doubt you're going to want to keep the old package, but at least you can. You're likely going to need to qpkg at least some of the dependencies also, though, so take a look at emerge -ept <foo>.

TBH if it's really been years, you're usually better off reinstalling Gentoo, than going through all the upgrades in the interim. If you must do the latter, take a look at update, in particular /etc/warning as it should have most of the major breakages in that time, along with what you need to do to get past them. It does them automatically, but you'd have to do a major upgrade in pieces, and if you're not used to update, you might prefer just using the info with emerge. (It takes all sorts;)

#gentoo-embedded on IRC:chat.freenode.net if you need to catch up.

[eccerr0r]

Actually the machine is up to date but I've had a mask on all newer versions of these packages (avr-libc and avr-gcc) to prevent upgrades on these only - the rest of the system have mostly been up to date and synced (it's been only about 4 months since last update).

The packages are avr-libc-1.4.4 and avr-gcc-3.3-r1 - these have long gone away from portage and though I can probably save the ebuilds they probably won't work anymore...

Hmm...
_________________
Intel Core i7 2700K/Radeon R7 250/24GB DDR3/256GB SSD
What am I supposed watching?

[steveL]