depclean wantd to remove nano after aborting docker install

[rzdndr]

Hello

I was installing gentoo on my new hardware. I have started emerging docker, but it took some time (because of a slow internet connection or something else, i am not sure). So I have stopped the installation with Ctrl+C. Then removed the package work directory from /var/tmp/portage manually. I then ran emerge --ask --depclean. This wanted to remove nano from the system. It also provided an warning that removing nano would result in unstable system, or something along these lines. I do not remember the exact warning message that was issued for nano.

I did an emerge --noreplace nano and did the depclean, which put nano into the @world (/var/lib/portage/world) file. I do not have nano in the @world on my old laptop. Now the new one has it. Should nano be in world?

Regards

[eschwartz]

There is already virtual/editor in @system, and it requires you have at least one terminal text editor installed -- nano is one option, so are vim and emacs and quite a few others.

If you want to have multiple such editors installed, it's a good idea to list all the ones you want to keep in your world file, since virtual/editor doesn't guarantee which one should be kept when using --depclean.

[logrusx]

You emerged something that's higher in the list of dependencies of virtual/editor. As already mentioned, if you want to keep it, you need to emerge --noreplcase it, so that it gets recorded in world. I personally have used it maybe twice - for each of my installations.

I had a similar experience with w3m and links I think. Not that I use them, but I wanted to try links for something while w3m was emerged. I think it was the default choice at installation time. Emerge offered to clean up w3m after I emerged links.

I'm not sure if the order is the same as in the ebuild or alphabetical. It makes sense that the maintainer sorted the list alphabetically, rather than portage sorting it, but that assumption may be wrong.

Best Regards,
Georgi