Ok, see an example first sys-libs/pam-0.75-r10 and x11-libs/gtk+-2.0.8 are installed : adsl root # emerge -p pam gtk+ These are the packages that I would merge, in order. Calculating dependencies ...done! [ebuild R ] sys-libs/pam-0.75-r10 [ebuild R ] x11-libs/gtk+-2.0.8 It seems that gtk+ depends directly or indirectly from pam (it is needed somewhere to use gtk+, the need can be from real dependencies or by some USE parameter) : adsl root # emerge -pe x11-libs/gtk+ | grep pam [ebuild N ] sys-libs/pam-0.75-r10 So I check what can suffer if I remove pam (which installed ebuilds depends on pam-0.75-r10, even indirectly) : adsl root # qpkg -q sys-libs/pam-0.75-r10 | grep gtk adsl root # Hum ... nothing. Should'nt "emerge -pe" be exactly the inverse of "qpkg -q" ? maybe "qpkg -q" does not check USE setting used, maybe it does not see all levels of dependencies but ... the result is the same, I do have nothing to have the complete list of what could be broken if I remove pam. Versions are the Gentoolkit 0.1.17-r3 and portage 2.0.43
the emerge output is correct
It would be nice if emerge could tell us about this itself, so we didn't have to have shell script hacks like qpkg. Until that happens sometime in the distant future, I'll see if I can't hack on this till it stops breaking.
qpkg is getting deprecated; wishes for features in the replacement tools (not named yet) will be solicited shortly.