On Mon, 02 Jan 2012 18:11:15 -0500, Michael Orlitzky wrote: > > How so? If anything that was not a dependency of something else was in > > the world file, how could anything be removed? > > I have both of these in world: > > dev-php/PEAR-Mail > dev-php/PEAR-Mail_Mime > > Let's say PEAR-Mail_Mime depends on PEAR-Mail -- it might, I haven't > checked, it's just an example. And I remember installing > PEAR-Mail_Mime: I needed it to receive binary attachments through a > contact form on an internal site. > > I suspect a customer had me install PEAR-Mail so that he could send > some notifications via SMTP rather than sendmail(). Can I remove it > from world? > > At the moment, yes I can: PEAR-Mail_Mime depends on PEAR-Mail, so there > will be no change in my --depclean output. But if I ever take down the > internal site, and uninstall PEAR-Mail_Mime, depclean will want to > remove PEAR-Mail, and break that guy's site. This is what that script > would do. > > If I know that I have been careful in the past, this is not a problem, > since the contents of world will be accurate. However, I'm a little > worried that I may have forgotten --oneshot and added PEAR-Mail by > mistake on an upgrade. Now, I have to either risk breaking some > customer's site, or leave PEAR-Mail in my world file forever.
nothing can protect you from something going wrong with this. What if you had installed dev-php/PEAR-Mail_Mime first? It would have pulled in dev-php/PEAR-Mail and you would not have had to install that for the other customer and it would not be in world. If the first customer no longer needs his packages, dev-php/PEAR-Mail would still be subject to depcleaning, no matter how emerge -u behaved. Where you have a situation where packages are dependencies of factors outside of portage, you have to take your own steps to manage this. The only software that can completely help you with that is already installed between your ears. As stated previously, I would use sets as a self-documenting method of doing this, but anything involving adequate record keeping should do. As Alan indicated, there is no real harm in having the odd spurious package in world aside from a tendency to bloat. -- Neil Bothwick What do you get if you cross an agnostic, an insomniac and adyslexic? Someone who lies awake at night wondering if there really is a dog.
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