Hello, Wol. On Sun, Jul 25, 2021 at 13:26:17 +0100, Wols Lists wrote: > On 25/07/21 12:47, Alan Mackenzie wrote: > >> They are, @system is a set of packages and nothing it it will be > >> > depcleaned. However, openrc is not part of @system, the virtual is.
> > Ah, that's it. So we have critical system packages which aren't part of > > @system. I think openrc is a critical system package. > Well, it's not installed on my new system. I doubt it's installed on any > new-ish gentoo-gnome systems. So openrc itself can't be critical. Must you be so objectionably pedantic? It is surely clear that I was using "openrc" as a metasyntactic variable for "the current init system". If it wasn't, apologies. > It may be critical for *your* system ... :-) Just as systemd is for your system. If you'd installed daemontools you would also have come within a keystroke of destroying your system, just as I did, on attempting emerge --depclean. You would have received no warning of any kind on installing the package, and there would be no documentation brought to your attention about the potential catastrophe. > Let's rephrase it - "openrc is one of the (optional) packages that > satisfied a critical dependency". If you must. > Your problem is caused because you have explicitly installed an > alternate package that satisfies the same critical dependency. No, my problem is caused by Gentoo allowing its package system, without me doing anything strange, to bring my system to within a single keystroke of destruction. That is a bug in any circumstance. All you and most of the others have done is pointed out the mechanisms by which this happened, with the implicit assumption that because that's what they do, they must be right. They're not at all right. Nobody here has made any suggestions as to how this situation might be prevented in the future, not just for me, but for the next user who needs daemontools. > Cheers, > Wol -- Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).
