I got some unstable(~x86) installed packages, but the rest of the system is all stable. P.e. i have installed Gimp-2.0.0 Now i want to "emerge world". But the process tries now to REinstall Gimp-1.2.5, although Gimp-2.0.0 is installed AND although there's NO other Gimp there. In general this leads to the problem, that it's not possible to update the whole system, because then several outdated packages are installed, that does not need to be installed. And updating the system one by one is very uncomfortable. Of course, a way could be to "ACCEPT_KEYWORDS='~x86' emerge -pv world". But then the whole system is updated to an unstable state, however i only want to update the system in a stable way, except the masked packages on my system. Theese shall be updated, too, but in a newer masked version, i think. In clear words my proposal. "emerge world" differs in installed packages between '~x86' and 'x86': 1. 'x86' is only updated to 'x86' versions 2. but '~x86' are updated to '~x86' versions 3. perhaps for compatibility by a flag like "-iu" for "--intelligent-update" Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Install something with ~x86 2. emerge -pv world 3. view the results ;-) Portage 2.0.50-r6 (hardened-x86-2004.0, gcc-3.3.2, glibc-2.3.2-r9, 2.6. 5-gentoo_udev) ================================================================= System uname: 2.6.5-gentoo_udev i686 Celeron (Mendocino) Gentoo Base System version 1.4.9 Autoconf: sys-devel/autoconf-2.58-r1 Automake: sys-devel/automake-1.8.3 ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86" AUTOCLEAN="yes" CFLAGS="-march=i686 -O2 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer" CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu" COMPILER="gcc3" CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/kde/2/share/config /usr/kde/3/share/config /usr/share/config /var/qmail/control" CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/gconf /etc/terminfo /etc/env.d" CXXFLAGS="-march=i686 -O2 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer" DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles" FEATURES="autoaddcvs buildpkg ccache sandbox sfperms strict" GENTOO_MIRRORS="ftp://sunsite.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/pub/Linux/gentoo http: //ftp.uni-erlangen.de/pub/mirrors/gentoo" MAKEOPTS="-j2" PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages" PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp" PORTDIR="/usr/portage" PORTDIR_OVERLAY="/usr/local/portage" SYNC="rsync://rsync.europe.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage" USE="apache2 berkdb crypt cups curl foomaticdb gd gd-external gdbm gif imagemagick innodb ipv6 jpeg kerberos linguas_de mcal memlimit mysql ncurses nls pam pdflib perl png ppds python readline slang ssl tcpd tiff truetype usb wmf x86 xml2 zlib"
man portage. read about /etc/portage/ files for local unmasking.