Hello Here's how packages are updated on a system currently. [1] emerge -Duvp world Here is another way of updating all packages on a system. [2] emerge -Duvp `qpkg -I -nc` The above two commands produce /_very different results_/. [2] includes many more package updates that have been completely neglected whilst performing [1]. To me it makes no sense whatsoever to neglect certain package updates and perform other ones. Also, I see no justification in updating only those packages in the world file when the other updates stated by [2] have clearly been installed on the user's system at some point during their use. They may have been dependencies but nevertheless are important since packages would not work without dependencies. This topic has arisen countless times, even recently, on all major channels of communication of the Gentoo community and I'm bringing it to bugs to give it the attention it is due. My suggestion is that portage at the very least should have an option which performs [2] and does in fact update *all* installed packages without relying on qpkg from gentoolkit. After all, the dominating strength of this operating system is package management and ease of updating. The problem of course with executing [2] using qpkg is that all packages get added to the world file so portage needs to handle this differently. If one wishes to provide a more rigorous solution to this problem then here is my alternative suggestion. At the moment there is a world file which contains a list of installed packages. I propose that _two_ package listing files are created. * World file - One will remain as the world file containing manually installed packages. * Deps file - Another will be a 'deps' file in the same location and this will contain all packages pulled in as a result of a manually installed package. This 'dependencies' file will also contain all system packages which form part of the initial base system. Then portage can provide two switches: * Switch 1 - To update installed packages and their immediate dependencies currently served by [1]. * Switch 2 - To update all installed packages which is, in essence, WORLD_FILE + DEPS_FILE. Another way is to have a file containing a listing of all installed packages in addition to world file and provide a switch to update all packages from this file. I believe this is a crucial feature currently absent from portage and as such making it incomplete. It is true that often some people find it undesirable to update all packages. However, the option should be provided just like depclean which is another action that is undesirable. Such a feature will demonstrate not only the potential strength of portage and also the grasp over the operating system. I look forward to hearing feedback. Many thanks.
Closing after discussing with reporter the fact that any omissions from -D are orphaned packages, which should either be added to the world file or removed from the system.
