[gentoo-amd64] Re: Portage Fails To Find Updates

[Frank Peters <frank.peters@comcast.net>]

On Mon, 14 Dec 2009 12:43:09 -0500
Frank Peters <frank.peters@comcast.net> wrote:

> 
> Why has portage failed to add all packages to the "world" file?
> Have I been doing something wrong?
> 

Well, I found the answer to my own question.  From the portage man
page:

 "Every  time  you  emerge  a package, the package that you
requested is recorded here.  Then when  you  run  `emerge
world  -up`, the list of packages is read from this file.
Note that this does not mean that the packages that  were
installed  as dependencies are listed here.  For example,
if you run `emerge mod_php` and you do  not  have  apache
already,  then "dev-php/mod_php" is recorded in the world
file but "net-www/apache" is not."

But to use the example of the package rpm2targz, using the command
"equery depends rpm2targz" I discover that media-fonts/urw-fonts-2.4.6
is the only package that depends on rpm2targz.  Thus, when I installed
urw-fonts, rpm2targz must have also been installed but not listed 
in the "world" file.

However, this practice seems to be a bad idea.  Since the time that I
installed urw-fonts, the package rpm2targz has been updated but I will
never know this unless urw-fonts also becomes updated.  A similar situation
could exist for many other packages.  Portage should by default enter all
packages into the "world" file.

Frank Peters