Gentoo Archives: gentoo-user

From: Dr Rainer Woitok <rainer.woitok@×××××.com>
To: gentoo-user@l.g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] Re: --depclean wants to remove openrc. Yikes!
Date: Tue, 27 Jul 2021 09:28:18
Message-Id: 24831.53669.190993.493758@tux.local
1 Alan,
2
3 On Monday, 2021-07-26 19:01:21 +0000, you wrote:
4
5 > ...
6 > The warning was not very explicit. An explicit warning would have said
7 > "--depclean is capable of removing critical system packages". As it
8 > happened I didn't ignore the warning. But some people might.
9 >
10 > You seem to see nothing wrong with an OS being one keypress away from
11 > destroying itself. I do.
12
13 You mentioned in an earlier post that you not only got this warning for
14 "openrc" but also for "nano". I remember that after my first Gentoo in-
15 stall ever, I explicitly emerged the packages "vim" (as an emergency
16 fallback) and -- more importantly -- "XEmacs" which were thus added to
17 "@world". I then ran my very first "emerge --ask --depclean" and got
18 that warning about "nano". I do not remember the exact wording, but --
19 honestly -- I was startled. Not very explicit? When "emerge" is tell-
20 ing me that removing "nano" might result in my system becoming unusable?
21 Or something to that effect? Being a Gentoo novice then, I immediately
22 replied "n", researched the webs, and then with a bit more knowledge and
23 conscience I rerun "emerge --ask --depclean" and bravely typed "y".
24
25 You were startled, too, when reading that warning, so where exactly is
26 the problem? Had I wanted a third editor I'd have stuffed "nano" into
27 "@world", but I didn't. Since you want "openrc", you should.
28
29 And yes, some people tend to ignore warnings. In particular, if there
30 are just too many of them. I remember when back in the old days plenty
31 of sources suggested to put "alias rm='rm -i'" into one's profile. I
32 always objected to this, because you'd get so used to typing "y" to the
33 plethora of questions that you'd have an excellent chance to miss the
34 one file which would have been worth retaining.
35
36 So the most important rule when working with computers still is "Read
37 carefully, think carefully, then type carefully". More warnings, bigger
38 fonts or red colour simply don't cut it. Or are you skimming your "gcc"
39 compilation logs after doing your weekly Gentoo upgrade for every warn-
40 ing in order to then check the source code to see whether or not you
41 should do anything about it? I don't.
42
43 My two cents ...
44
45 Sincerely,
46 Rainer

Replies

Subject Author
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: --depclean wants to remove openrc. Yikes! Alan Mackenzie <acm@×××.de>