Re: [gentoo-user] how to prevent portage from installing masked package

[Rich Freeman]

On Sat, Oct 6, 2018 at 9:12 AM John Covici <covici@××××××××××.com> wrote:
>
> On Sat, 06 Oct 2018 08:26:15 -0400,
> Neil Bothwick wrote:
> >
> > [1  <text/plain; US-ASCII (quoted-printable)>]
> > On Sat, 06 Oct 2018 07:05:52 -0400, John Covici wrote:
> >
> > > Hi.  I am in a situation where portage wants to install a package
> > > which I have masked.  Its  wants to do this
> > > [ebuild     U #] x11-libs/gtk+-3.24.1:3::mv [3.22.30:3::gentoo]
> > > but I want to keep the old one.  Why is this happening and how can I
> > > preventthe install of the newer gtk+ which breaks some accessibility
> > > features?
> >
> > It's difficult to say without seeing the portage output but it is
> > probably a package that needs the newer version. Add -t to the emerge
> > command to see what requires the later GTK+, you'll probably need to mask
> > that too.
>
> OK, I thought it would just either refuse or tell me something, but I
> will do that and see what I see.  Thanks.
>

It is already doing both.

It is refusing to install the masked package, which is why it is
aborting, and probably suggesting that you unmask it.  Likewise the
big hash tag in the output is noting that is masked currently.

The problem is that you're probably also telling portage something
contradictory, like installing some package that requires the newer
version of gtk+ (probably from your world set).  So, it isn't doing
that either, and is giving you a bunch of output.

Impossible to guess what the issue is without the full output, but as
suggested sticking --tree and --verbose in there would help.  That
will show the dependency relationships, and also USE flags which might
be triggering them.

If you have a package masked and nothing else is trying to pull it in,
then portage will more quietly ignore it.  It is calling the situation
to your attention because one way or another it won't be doing
something you currently want it to (keeping some other package
up-to-date, but also not installing this version of gtk+).

-- 
Rich