On Sun, 25 Jul 2021 11:47:40 +0000, Alan Mackenzie wrote:

> > > I would say all packages in @system _are_ needed, unless the user
> > > explicitly says otherwise.  
> 
> > They are, @system is a set of packages and nothing it it will be
> > depcleaned. However, openrc is not part of @system, the virtual is.  
> 
> Ah, that's it.  So we have critical system packages which aren't part of
> @system.  I think openrc is a critical system package.

openrc is not necessarily critical, just some sort of service manager.
that's the whole point of a virtual, to handle different use cases and
requirements.

> > That is possible, but it is also possible that this is entirely down
> > to you installing things outside of portage and handling their
> > dependencies manually, creating unwanted side-effects like this.  
> 
> Quite the contrary.  If I'd've stuck to the daemontools I installed from
> a tarball, this whole thing wouldn't have happened.  It's BECAUSE I
> switched to using the portage version that this danger reared its ugly
> head.

My point is that you are mixing portage and non-portage packages, that's
why portage is getting confused. I don't know much about daemontools, but
it seems the sort of package that should not be in @world, but only
installed as a dependency of something else.

I'm nit suggesting that you should avoid non-portage packages, that may
be impossible or undesirable, but you should be aware of possible
consequences. When I need portage to install dependencies to a
non-portage package, I generally create a set for them, so you could
create qmail-deps containing both daemontools and openrc and emerge it.
Then you are safe from either being depcleaned. If you ever decide to
stop using qmail, you can just unmerge the set and let portage clean up.

> > > Maybe the answer is to regard --depclean as a tool for experts only,
> > > since it is capable in ordinary innocent use of rendering a system
> > > unusable.  
> 
> > I feel it's more a case of Gentoo being a system for those that
> > understand what they are doing with the system - with great power
> > comes great responsibility and all that.  
> 
> That feels needlessly patronising, Neil.  I fear the Gentoo maintainers
> will take the same attitude.  Not only can the user shoot himself in the
> foot, but it's Gentoo that provides the gun, innocently wrapped, with a
> "press here" direction on the packaging above a hidden trigger.  Nobody
> accepts any responsibility for preventing accidents.

It wasn't meant to be patronising, but you should be aware of what is
going on. In this case you were because although portage suggested
removing openrc, you sensibly declined the offer.
 
> The implication of what you say is that nobody should use portage
> without understanding every last intricate detail of it.  This doesn't
> feel reasonable.

No, but it is a system that demands a greater level of understanding from
its users than, say, apt or rpm.

> Nobody but me seems to see anything wrong with all this.  It's one thing
> saying users should look after themselves, but surely it's quite another
> thing to provide an obsure mechanism where one's one keypress away from
> destroying ones system.

You could cripple it but not destroy it. It would not be nice, but you
can recover from the accidental removal of openrc or even python.
Fortunately, you don't have to find out exactly how not nice :)


-- 
Neil Bothwick

- How many surrealists does it take to change a light bulb?
- Two: one to hold the giraffe, the other to fill the bathtub with
  lots of brightly colored machine tools.