Leaving Gentoo

[csteeves]

1. nah, I don't think so (but perhaps). It's probably taking a closer look because of the extra world entries. I'm interested to see what the two emerge lists look like and how exactly they differ.

try adding a -t (order by emerge depenency) to see what is pulling in what between the two world files.

2. I'd just do what you've done, afaik there isn't any other way.

Right now there is no difference, but that's because I synced and updated yesterday morning. The last time I looked at this there were half a dozen differences (all dependencies). If I use

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emerge -pveDt world

then with the unedited world I get 656 packages, while with the edited file I get 550. Haven't looked through to see what the differences are, though. But it suggests that I won't be getting a full update with my edited world file (or else that I have even more junk in the unedited file than I supposed). In both cases there are plenty of 'nomerge' tags in the emerge list, so obviously many packages are being pulled in both as dependencies and as members of world.

Gives me something to fiddle with, anyhow.

Thanks for your help!

Craig

[steveL]

Speaking of which, I've already managed to do this at some point - that is, emerge dependencies without --oneshot, which makes a mess of my world file.

Man I did that; you didn't use that update-world script did you? It completely messed up my world file as it emerged every single package without oneshot; that's the original reason [topic=546828]update[/topic] requires -i to install to world ;p Now, I just think it works better since a lot of the time I'm installing stuff just because it needs to be upgraded for another package, and it's a special event to update -ia something :P

..more packages for the unedited version. It seems to me that if I had deleted only the dependencies from world, then I should get the same result for both my edited and unedited world files.

No; the unedited version would make portage check more packages for updates, and if using -D all their dependencies too. The more that's in world, the more things portage will be looking at for potential updates. I recommend an emerge -p --depclean to see what stuff portage now thinks is redundant; emerge --noreplace anything you want to keep, then let it do it's thing (followed by a revdep-rebuild.)

[csteeves]

Man I did that; you didn't use that update-world script did you? It completely messed up my world file as it emerged every single package without oneshot; that's the original reason [topic=546828]update[/topic] requires -i to install to world ;p Now, I just think it works better since a lot of the time I'm installing stuff just because it needs to be upgraded for another package, and it's a special event to update -ia something :P

No, I've never used update-world. At some point I had a long emerge (maybe related to modular Xorg?) which was behaving badly and required plenty of babysitting. After about 100 or so packages I remembered the --oneshot option and gave my head a big slap. Over the course of a year or so the emerge process has been slowly deteriorating so that now I probably have a lot of unnecessary stuff in world, so every few months I give fixing it a try. Jonnevers mentioned something related to this, which reminded me of the problem, and I hoped he might have a better solution than what I've tried in the past.

One possibility: there is a tool dep in the package udept, which is supposed to clean the world file to eliminate any packages which are dependencies of other packages, but it produces results that are a bit strange. I might be able to babysit that to make it work like I want, but I haven't spent the time yet.

[The Unknown]

I have been trying to wrap my head around this oneshot buisness, and for the life of me can not seem to understand why someone would
not want all the packages emerged put in the world file. For instance jonnevers suggested that pango and gtk+ should have been compiled with
oneshot. Why would you not want pango and gtk+ put in the world so that they can be updated if needed. It was said earlier in this thread
that your world file becomes a mess, whats that supposed to mean? Since my first days with gentoo, the only oneshoting that has been done
on my system is from revdep's, and I haven't noticed anything broken or wrong and every package is kept up to date.

[csteeves]

I have been trying to wrap my head around this oneshot buisness, and for the life of me can not seem to understand why someone would
not want all the packages emerged put in the world file. For instance jonnevers suggested that pango and gtk+ should have been compiled with
oneshot. Why would you not want pango and gtk+ put in the world so that they can be updated if needed. It was said earlier in this thread
that your world file becomes a mess, whats that supposed to mean? Since my first days with gentoo, the only oneshoting that has been done
on my system is from revdep's, and I haven't noticed anything broken or wrong and every package is kept up to date.

What happens (I think - someone else may correct me here) is that by putting all the packages on your system into the world file, you end up maintaining and updating packages that the system no longer needs. Take Xorg for example. It has a lot of dependencies, none of which need be in the world file because they can be updated by updating Xorg and using --deep. They could alternately be updated by explicitly listing them in world. However, if the dependencies of Xorg later change, such that some of the old dependencies (and their dependencies, etc...) are no longer needed, they will still be updated despite being unnecessary. Over the course of time this evolution has left me with about 100 packages which emerge -vDuN world will update which probably aren't necessary. Hence any emerge takes much longer than needed, and looking at the world file isn't very helpful as far as determining which top-level packages (ie GIMP, OpenOffice) I actually have installed.

[NeddySeagoon]

csteeves,

You are correct. You can identify and remove these orphan packages with

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emerge --depclean -p

You must check what --depclean wants to go. Its been known to want to remove gcc, glibc, pythion and other things which you would really rather it didn't. However, having found out what it wants to do and that its safe, you can let it do it, or you can use the list of packages to be removed to do it yourself.

revdep-rebuild uses --oneshot what it fixes broken packages as it emerges things by name that are either in your world file already or are dependencies, which do not need to be in the world file.

[csteeves]

You are correct. You can identify and remove these orphan packages with

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emerge --depclean -p

You must check what --depclean wants to go. Its been known to want to remove gcc, glibc, pythion and other things which you would really rather it didn't. However, having found out what it wants to do and that its safe, you can let it do it, or you can use the list of packages to be removed to do it yourself.

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emerge --depclean -p

seems to produce a lot of packages which I obviously want to keep (python for example), as well as many which I'm not sure about. Say --depclean suggests removing packageX, will

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equery depends packageX

tell me whether it's OK to unemerge the package, if the result is that no other package depends upon packageX? If not, what's the right way to tell that a package can be safely removed?

[NeddySeagoon]

csteeves,

Python is slotted. You may have several versions installed.
Provded you have run pythin-updater, its OK to remove older versions
--depclean identifies package-version to be removed, not complete packages.