[gentoo-user] Can I exclude a package from --depclean's consideration?

[Paul Hartman]

"emerge --depclean" always wants to remove all but the most recent
version of gentoo-sources. I read the manpage and can't figure out how
to exclude this package. The manpage states:

"Packages that are part of the world set will always be kept."

However, if I have sys-kernel/gentoo-sources in world, it still wants
to remove all but the most recent version of that package, which I
think is the correct behavior... just not what I desire.

For now I am working around this by placing version-specific package
atoms into my world file, but I am just curious if there is a
different way of "masking" them from depclean -- one that does not
require me to manually edit my world file every time a new kernel
revision is installed.

So, my question: Is there a way to tell depclean to never remove *any*
version of gentoo-sources?

Thanks.