Re: [gentoo-dev] Auto adding packages to world was -> Sets vs Meta ebuilds

[Sam Jorna (wraeth)]

On 12/07/17 10:05, William L. Thomson Jr. wrote:
> I should have caught that sooner. -c does not remove a package, it just
> removes its deps.
>
> -c == --depclean.

--depclean is doing exactly what it is supposed to. If called with no
arguments, it searches for any unneeded dependencies and removes them,
however if called with a package as an argument, it will remove that
package *if it is not a dependency of another package*. Reporting
"nothing to remove" is precisely what it's supposed to do, and using
--verbose will tell you what is depending on the package.

To be clear, running '--depclean foo' does not remove dependencies of
foo, it removes foo provided it is not a dependency. It can be seen as a
dependency-aware (and thus, generally safe) --unmerge.

Making --depclean _always_ give you more information should just be a
case of adding --verbose to EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS.

> It is not the same as -C, which is remove a package directly.
>
>  --unmerge (-C)

Correct, --unmerge will remove a package without considering
dependencies (give or take a few special cases). It is usually (or, at
least, should generally be) reserved for those taking a hammer to a
problem or with a particular desire to recover a broken system.

Again, it's doing exactly what it's supposed to - removing a package
you've told it to remove (unless it's one of the few
almost-always-critical packages).

-- 
Sam Jorna (wraeth)
GnuPG ID: D6180C26