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

[Morgan Wesström]

Frank Peters wrote:
> Today, doing an "emerge -pvDu world" I get the report that no packages
> need to be updated.
>
> But while checking the status of another package, I happen to execute
> "emerge -pv rpm2targz."  This then reports that the package rpm2targz
> needs to be updated.
>
> Why didn't the "emerge -pvDu world" tell me about this?

Most likely rpm2targz is an orphaned package. Try "emerge -p --depclean"
and see if it's listed. Orphaned packages are not updated by an emerge
world update since nothing is using it.

> Further checking reveals that all packages that are installed on my
> machine are contained in the /var/db/pkg directory.  However, the "world"
> file, which is located at /var/lib/portage/world, should contain the same
> listing but it does not.  I notice that some packages in /var/db/pkg
> are not listed in /var/lib/portage/world.
>
> Actually, the "world" file has 257 entries, while the "/var/lib/portage/world"
> directory contains 414 packages.
>
> Why has portage failed to add all packages to the "world" file?
> Have I been doing something wrong?

Your world file should only contain your top level applications. All the
other packages are dependencies and should not be listed there.
Dependencies can come and go as functionality is moved between packages
and by not listing them there they can easily be removed by an "emerge
--depclean". If you insist on listing every package in your world file
you will end up with a bloated system, full of packages that aren't used
for anything.

> In any case, I can rebuild the world file manually to accurately
> reflect the state my system, but, based upon this current observation,
> portage may fail to keep it accurate in the future.
>
> What is going on here?

Nothing is going on. Everything is perfectly fine and is working
according to its design. :-)

>
> Frank Peters
>

/Morgan
>