On Thu, Dec 18, 2014 at 07:06:32PM -0500, Harry Putnam wrote: > Well, that knocks down most of the unwanted pkgs but still as you see: > > emerge -vp emacs-w3m > > [ebuild N ] virtual/emacs-24 0 KiB > [ebuild N ] virtual/w3m-0 0 KiB > [ebuild N ] app-emacs/emacs-w3m-1.4.528_pre20140213 > > `virtual/emacs-24' still hanging in there > > I didn't learn enough googling to understand what having that > virtual/emacs-24 installed would mean. > > Would it be possible headaches with emacs-25 installed outside > portage. > > Can anyone say what that package actually does?
It doesn't really do a thing - it only serves as a placeholder for functionality that can be provided by a number of different packages ... or in other words: There are multiple packages that could, in theory, provide virtual/emacs-24. app-editors/emacs-24.4-r1 would be one of them. You have told your system by means of package.provided that you have installed app-editors/emacs-24, so the system is validly assuming that you have something on your system satisfying virtual/emacs-24, and thus it shouldn't hurt to let portage install that virtual. portage(5) has this to say: "Virtual packages (virtual/*) should not be specified in package.provided, since virtual packages themselves do not provide any files, and package.provided is intended to represent packages that do provide files. Depending on the type of virtual, it may be necessary to add an entry to the virtuals file and/or add a package that satisfies a virtual to package.provided." Greetings, Nils
