[gentoo-user] Re: emerge --resume says "invalid resume list".

[Jonathan Callen]

On 06/22/2016 03:57 PM, Dan Douglas wrote:
> On 06/22/2016 12:31 PM, Neil Bothwick wrote:
>> On Wed, 22 Jun 2016 08:39:59 -0500, Dan Douglas wrote:
>>> --keep-going is in EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS so the problem is only when
>>> that fails for whatever reason, --resume (with or without
>>> --skip-first) always fails too.
>> On 06/22/2016 12:31 PM, Neil Bothwick wrote:
>> That makes sense, --keep-going has already made sure that all updates
>> that are not dependant on the failing one have emerged, so there's
>> nothing left to emerge until you fix the broken package.
>
>
> That's what it should do but it clearly doesn't quite work that way.
> It's easy to prove it's broken by finding any package on the resume list
> that can merge on its own without pulling in a previously failed package.
>
> I've had completely up-to-date systems where no possible failure could
> result in an unsatisfied dependency and portage refuses to resume an
> `emerge -e @world` with hundreds of possible packages on the resume list
> that would work in isolation. That's the problem.
>
>

Often, the issue in these cases is that there is some broken dependency
already present on the system (for some value of "broken").  This may be
a package that is not required by anything (so --depclean would remove
it) is now broken because it requires something that isn't installed.
It may also be a package that is only required as a build dependency of
something, if you do not have '--with-bdeps=y' in your
EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS.  Unfortunately, it is difficult to get portage to
explain what it thinks is broken in these cases.  If trying to do a
`emerge -pvte @world` shows packages that would be updated, newly
installed, or rebuilt, when your normal @world update would show
nothing, this may be part of the problem.

-- 
Jonathan Callen