On Tue, Mar 03, 2015 at 12:01:04AM +0100, Andreas K. Huettel wrote
> Well... let's say it like this:
>
> If you look at your world file, you should for each line be able to
> immediately say "yes I know what this is and I need it". Where "I need it"
> means "I need it directly", and *not* "I need it because some other package
> needs it".
>
> In most cases this means that libraries should not be in the world file.
> You'll rarely say "Yes I need Boost." Instead you may need LibreOffice, and
> that needs Boost...
Rather than try to remember everything, let the computer do some of
the work for you (novel idea <G>). Use the command...
xargs -a /var/lib/portage/world -n 1 equery d
to determine which files would be pulled in as dependancies.
***WARNING: DO NOT REDIRECT OR PIPE***. It won't work. Use a 2nd term
for the output, along with {CTRL-S} and {CTRL-Q} to stop and restart the
output. You'l have to run the command with root privileges to see the
file /var/lib/portage/world Here's how it starts off for me...
[d531][root][~] xargs -a /var/lib/portage/world -n 1 equery d
* These packages depend on app-admin/localepurge:
* These packages depend on app-admin/logrotate:
* These packages depend on app-admin/sudo:
* These packages depend on app-admin/syslog-ng:
* These packages depend on app-arch/zip:
sys-devel/gcc-4.8.3 (app-arch/zip)
www-client/seamonkey-2.32 (app-arch/zip)
There are no ebuilds depending on localepurge, logrotate, sudo, or
syslog-ng. It's up to you whether or not you want them. However, zip
is an absolute dependancy of gcc and seamonkey, and can be removed from
my world file. Absolute dependancies are easy. *BEWARE OF CONDITIONAL
DEPENDANCIES*; e.g.
* These packages depend on dev-perl/File-MimeInfo:
x11-misc/xdg-utils-1.1.0_rc2 (perl ? dev-perl/File-MimeInfo)
That says if you've built x11-misc/xdg-utils-1.1.9_rc2 withe the
"perl" USE flag, then dev-perl/File-MimeInfo will be pulled in as a
dependancy. You have to check whether you've used that USE flag on that
ebuilds.
And a "lib" is not necessarily always a direct dependancy. E.g. my
HDHomerun OTA TV tuner requires the media-libs/libhdhomerun ebuild to be
explicitly installed.
Walter Dnes <[email protected]>
I don't run "desktop environments"; I run useful applications
