Re: [gentoo-alt] does 'emerge world' replace already updated packages?

[Jeremy Olexa]

On 2011-09-13 15:55, Askar Bektassov wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> My question is straightforward, under what circumstances emerge world
> re-emerges packages even if installed and updated?

So, strictly speaking, emerge takes an atom and will install that. In 
this case, 'world' is the atom. 'emerge world' will REINSTALL every atom 
in your world file (.../var/lib/portage/world). The canonical way to 
UPDATE all packages is with the short options "-uDN", emerge -pvuDN 
world.

To break that down further, if you were trying to install 
'app-editors/vim' then 'emerge vim' would install vim the first time and 
keep reinstalling vim every subsequent time, but 'emerge -u vim' would 
only update vim if needed.

Hope that helps,
Jeremy