Some way to protect packages from --depclean?

[midnite]

[Administrator note: this post, and the first 8 responses, were originally attached to the 12 year old topic Some way to protect packages from --depclean?. However, this post has a different question. The old thread correctly noted that packages in @world are protected. That solution is not acceptable here because OP intends to keep packages that no longer exist in the tree. -Hu]

Sorry to bring up this old thread. I have the same question with the OP. How to protect packages from --depclean?

I used to have old gentoo-sources listed in the world sets: (6.6.30 is current. 6.6.13 is old.)

[pietinger]

[logrusx]

[midnite]

Thank you pietinger.

[logrusx]

[midnite]

Thank you Georgi.

Case 1. If there is only sys-kernel/gentoo-sources:6.6.30 in the world set file, depclean will remove sys-kernel/gentoo-sources:6.6.13.

Case 2. If there are both sys-kernel/gentoo-sources:6.6.13 and sys-kernel/gentoo-sources:6.6.30 in the world set file, emerge -av @world will not let me to proceed. (More details below.)

I guess you may add an unavailable package, e.g. sys-kernel/gentoo-sources:0.0.00, into the world file to reproduce my issue.

To my understanding, this occurs to me because I have removed the binary packages in /var/cache/binpkgs/*. For other users, emerge will find a previously installed package, (in this case, sys-kernel/gentoo-sources:6.6.13), in the local binary package files. Thus leaving a package, that is unavailable in online Gentoo repos, in the world files will not make emerge -av @world complains about it is not found.

To illustrate "emerge does not let me to proceed. It is not only a message", I have added a package that is not installed into the world set file, which is dev-util/checkbashisms.

[Hu]

emerge -av @world tells Portage to try to install every package listed in @world. Every package thus selected must be installable. The old gentoo-sources ebuild no longer exists, so it is not installable. Listing a package in @world that is not presently installed is weird, but legal. Trying to install a package that cannot be installed is not legal.

[midnite]

Thank you Hu.

[logrusx]

Let me clarify what are the implications of what Hu said are.

Running emerge -av @world is not an update but rather rebuild command. It tells portage everything in world should be rebuilt including the non-existent package. Instead you should run update command by adding -u. And to be more precise, if you want full world update it whould be emerge -avuDU @world or emerge -avuDN @world, the latter should be used if you build binary packages and the former is recommended if you don't as it will not cause unnecessary rebuilds.

Best Regards,
Georgi

[midnite]

Thank you Georgi, and all of you who helped me.

I understand now. It was my careless mistake.

The correct solution is, keeping the old versions (i.e. sys-kernel/gentoo-sources:6.6.13 , etc) in the world set files, even if it is no longer available. This avoids depclean removing them. And update entire system by emerge -avuND @world. With the options --update or --newuse or --changed-use, the unavailable packages will not stop emerge to proceed.

I used to update the system by emerge -avuND @world. I was just lazy and careless, which caused this confusion. Thank you again to everyone.

- - - -

On the other hand, as mentioned in the message from depclean, there is a field called "protected", and it says "'Protected' and 'omitted' packages will not be removed." What does that protected field mean? How to use it? I cannot find any documentation about this.
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- midnite.

[logrusx]