Pending updates disappear with single USE flag change

[Princess Nell]

This is in the context of the news item regarding pipewire support in the desktop profile.

I followed the instructions in the news item and sound still works after a reboot, thankfully, but there are some aspects that leave me scratching my head.

Prior to the pipewire installation, this system was ALSA based and it has -pulseaudio in make.conf. There are pending updates:

Code: Select all

# emerge -upDN world

These are the packages that would be merged, in order:

Calculating dependencies... done!
Dependency resolution took 50.92 s (backtrack: 1/20).

[ebuild     U  ] media-libs/alsa-topology-conf-1.2.5.1-r1 [1.2.5.1] USE="-verify-sig%" 
[ebuild     U  ] sys-apps/pv-1.10.3 [1.10.2]
[ebuild     U  ] dev-lang/python-3.13.11 [3.13.9]
[ebuild   R    ] sys-fs/e2fsprogs-1.47.3-r1  USE="-verify-sig%" 
[ebuild   R    ] sys-apps/less-685  USE="-verify-sig%" 
[ebuild   R    ] sys-apps/smartmontools-7.5-r1  USE="-verify-sig%" 
[ebuild     U  ] sys-kernel/dracut-108-r5 [108-r4] USE="(-systemd)" 
[ebuild     U  ] mail-client/thunderbird-140.7.0 [140.6.0]
[ebuild     U  ] net-analyzer/wireshark-4.6.2-r2 [4.6.0-r1]

!!! The following update has been skipped due to unsatisfied dependencies:
...
(message about firefox and masked icu)

But when I remove -pulseaudio from make.conf, there are no more updates pending:

Code: Select all

# emerge -upDN world

These are the packages that would be merged, in order:

Calculating dependencies... done!
Dependency resolution took 46.04 s (backtrack: 1/20).

...
(message about icu)

What can explain this? I can see about two ebuilds that relate to sound in the above list.

(I think I misread the news item on first read and thought the pulseaudio USE flag was required now, which is how this situation arose.)

[sam_]

The results when Portage has to cut out large parts of the depgraph because of an --exclude, masked package, or otherwise severe backtracking can lead to this. It's a bit odd but I wouldn't be concerned by it.

[Princess Nell]

Got it. I had tried a higher backtrack count, but it was probably not sufficient. After unmasking icu for testing, I see all the packages being rebuilt as result of the now-enabled pulseaudio use flag.

I'll keep pulseaudio off and wait for icu 78 stabilization.

[sam_]

Related here too is that FF and possibly some other packages needing a rebuild for ICU have a pulseaudio USE.