Re: [gentoo-user] --depclean wants to remove openrc. Yikes!

[Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org>]

On Sat, Jul 24, 2021 at 10:46 AM Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de> wrote:
>
> On Sat, Jul 24, 2021 at 10:14:20 -0400, Rich Freeman wrote:
> > On Sat, Jul 24, 2021 at 9:47 AM Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de> wrote:
>
> > > So in these virtual packages, it seems by default the _last_ mentioned
> > > package in a || ( ... ) construct is the one --depclean keeps.  It all
> > > has the feeling of things not having been properly thought through.
>
> > I'm not sure what the default is - most likely PMS just requires that
> > one of them be kept.
>
> PMS?  Part of emerge?

Package Manager Specification.  Specifically:
https://projects.gentoo.org/pms/8/pms.html#x1-760008.2.3

All it requires is that one be present.  Portage can use whatever
behavior it wishes to decide which to keep (assuming all installed
packages have their deps).

> It seems it's insisting on removing all packages but one which satisfy a
> virtual.  Maybe that is unwise, and it should keep _all_ such packages
> which are currently installed.

Well, the whole point of an any-of dependency is to only require one
of them.  Why force packages to stick around if they aren't needed?

Now, whether daemontools actually should satisfy the dependency I
don't want to comment on without doing more research.  Surely though
there is little point in having openrc and systemd and runit on the
same system unless the user explicitly wants this (and if they do they
can just stick them in @world).

> I'm considering submitting a bug to bugs.gentoo.org, requesting that
> _all_ installed packages satisfying a virtual get kept.  There is surely
> something wrong when somebody who just wants to be a user (me) has to
> read .ebuild files to get normal things done.

I'd be shocked if that went anywhere.  I'd think the better solution
would be to have some kind of USE flag that tells daemontools whether
it is used as an actual service manager or not, though that has its
own issues (changing that state shouldn't require rebuilds/etc, but it
would).

In any case, you probably should have a chat with the daemontools
maintainer.  I doubt the portage team would consider doing something
like this as some kind of universal policy.  It would impact hundreds
of things that have any-of dependencies.

-- 
Rich