(This is not a duplicate of bug 17705) Portage regularly outputs information which it should not. Things like > It may be possible to solve this problem by using package.mask to > prevent one of those packages from being selected. However, it is also > possible that conflicting dependencies exist such that they are > impossible to satisfy simultaneously. If such a conflict exists in > the dependencies of two different packages, then those packages can > not be installed simultaneously. You may want to try a larger value of > the --backtrack option, such as --backtrack=30, in order to see if > that will solve this conflict automatically. > > For more information, see MASKED PACKAGES section in the emerge man > page or refer to the Gentoo Handbook. do not belong in the regular analytic output of any application. Output is supposed to be as self-explanatory as possible, but it's not supposed to document itsself. Also, other messages could be phrased way shorter without loosing their meaning to anyone but people who've got not a clue what they're dealing with. Examples: > !!! Multiple package instances within a single package slot have been pulled > !!! into the dependency graph, resulting in a slot conflict: to > Multiple packages compete for the same slot: Likewise > The following keyword changes are necessary to proceed: > (see "package.accept_keywords" in the portage(5) man page for more details) > # required by x11-themes/gtk-engines-unico-1.0.2 > # required by @selected > # required by @world (argument) > =dev-libs/glib-2.34.3 ~amd64 > # required by www-client/midori-0.4.6-r1[-deprecated] > # required by @selected > # required by @world (argument) > =net-libs/webkit-gtk-1.10.2-r300 ~amd64 > # required by www-client/midori-0.4.6-r1 > # required by @selected > # required by @world (argument) > =net-libs/libsoup-2.40.3 ~amd64 to > Required Keywords: > =dev-libs/glib-2.34.3 ~amd64 (x11-themes/gtk-engines-unico-1.0.2, @selected, @world) > =net-libs/webkit-gtk-1.10.2-r300 ~amd64 (www-client/midori-0.4.6-r1[-deprecated],@selected,@world) > =net-libs/webkit-gtk-1.10.2-r300 ~amd64 (www-client/midori-0.4.6-r1,@selected,@world) It's less about the exact wording (which is a matter of what one considers clear enough) but the sheer overabundance of line breaks and fill words and icons. The endless amount of "#"s is as unecessary as stating that "@world" is the argument, at least I've never noticed anything but the argument coming as the last dependency. I could bring forth a long list of where portage speaks just too much to still be taken seriously, but the general idea is that output should be short and precise and not prosa. In practice, it's just extremly annoying if the information-to-prosa ratio drops to 10/90, which is very often the case. Then the few most informative lines are spread over several terminal pages, scrambled with "#"s, linebreaks and the ever-repeating help message which is practically a quote from the manpage. If you really think that this kind of verbosity is necessary, I strongly suggest you subject it to yet another switch such as "--verbose-help".
