On Thu, 2003-11-20 at 14:22, Jason Evans wrote: > I ran gentoo on a system for a few days earlier this year, right up to > where my system became a casualty of an emerge limitation, documented at > http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/portage-manual.xml : > > Warning: Unmerging packages can be dangerous. If you remove any > core packages your system may cease to function and the removal of > various libraries may cause software to fail. Portage does not warn > you if you are removing core packages or dependencies for other > packages. > > This seems like a critical limitation to me. It means that unless I have a > deep understanding of the dependencies among packages, the number of > packages on my system can only grow. > > In general, Gentoo seems to be quite well architected, and this limitation > sticks out like a sore thumb to me. What is the rationale? Is it on the > "to be fixed" list, or is it intentional? If it's intentional, how do > people maintain systems over the long term without re-installing every so > often? > > I'm searching for a Linux distro to switch to (I'm one of those Red Hat > customers being left in the lurch), and Gentoo seems really nice, *except* > for this one problem, so some enlightenment would really be appreciated.
Jason, The problem is that reverse dependency checking doesn't work properly yet. That means that if Portage attempted to remove some package A, it's unable to properly check if any other packages need any of the same dependencies package A has, so it can't remove the whole chain of things package A depends on. I believe this is on the "to be fixed" list.
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