Re: [gentoo-user] portage-2.2.0_alpha38 & --depclean

[Mark Knecht <markknecht@gmail.com>]

On Tue, Jun 7, 2011 at 4:09 PM, Neil Bothwick <neil@digimed.co.uk> wrote:
> On Tue, 7 Jun 2011 14:39:34 -0700, Mark Knecht wrote:
>
>>    What I didn't like about this issue popping up yesterday is that it
>> altered the idea that average users never touch anything in @system.
>> Iin fact, TTBOMK I've never in 11 or 12 years of running Gentoo ever
>> done an emerge -C on a @system package until this morning when I
>> removed nano.
>
> That's the point though, nano is not a system package, it is not needed
> for Gentoo to be usable. You need an editor, but it does not have to be
> nano, that is simply the default if the user makes no other choice.
>
> Forcing nano into @system goes against the whole idea of using virtuals
> to specify required functionality, rather than requiring a specific
> program.
>

That's what I thought until I moved to the kde profile, at which time
it seems to about 80% of kde-meta became part of @system. Prior to
switching to that profile I think @system as about 150 packages. Today
it's 389:

2stable ~ # emerge -epv @system

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

Calculating dependencies... done!
[ebuild   R    ] sys-libs/zlib-1.2.5-r2  475 kB
[ebuild   R    ] virtual/libintl-0  0 kB
<SNIP>
[ebuild   R    ] kde-base/kdesu-4.6.2  USE="handbook (-aqua) -debug
(-kdeenablefinal) (-kdeprefix)" 0 kB
[ebuild   R    ] kde-misc/polkit-kde-kcmodules-0.98_pre20101127
USE="(-aqua) -debug (-kdeenablefinal)" 0 kB
[ebuild   R    ] kde-base/khelpcenter-4.6.2  USE="(-aqua) -debug
(-kdeenablefinal) (-kdeprefix)" 0 kB

Total: 389 packages (9 new, 380 reinstalls), Size of downloads: 308,431 kB
c2stable ~ #

My thought at this point is that WRT @system the devs are doing
something magic with Gentoo, taking it in some new direction which I
don't understand yet, and because of that I'm likely to be confused
for some time to come. The idea of a virtual seems very reasonable to
me, but somehow it seems the implementation of it all just isn't as
clear to me as it should be, and the onus is on me to go learn and not
the devs to teach me.

Cheers,
Mark