portage adds packages to the world file whose are only dependencies for other packages - so the world file is growing of package names not explicitely emerged. This prevents a 'emerge depclean' from cleaning those packages are added by portage to the world file during update of other main packages. I saw - long time go - a bug report that this issue should be resolved with portage 2.0.51 but it isn't. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. 2. 3. Portage 2.0.51-r2 (default-x86-2004.2, gcc-3.3.4, glibc-2.3.4.20040808-r1, 2.6.9-gentoo-r1 i686) ================================================================= System uname: 2.6.9-gentoo-r1 i686 Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 1.70GHz Gentoo Base System version 1.4.16 Autoconf: sys-devel/autoconf-2.59-r5 Automake: sys-devel/automake-1.8.5-r1 Binutils: sys-devel/binutils-2.14.90.0.8-r1 Headers: sys-kernel/linux-headers-2.4.21-r1 Libtools: sys-devel/libtool-1.5.2-r5 ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86" AUTOCLEAN="yes" CFLAGS="-O3 -march=pentium4 -fomit-frame-pointer -pipe" CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu" COMPILER="" CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xkb /usr/kde/2/share/config /usr/kde/3.2/share/config /usr/kde/3.3/env /usr/kde/3.3/share/config /usr/kde/3.3/shutdown /usr/kde/3/share/config /usr/lib/mozilla/defaults/pref /usr/share/config /var/qmail/control" CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/gconf /etc/terminfo /etc/env.d" CXXFLAGS="-O3 -march=pentium4 -fomit-frame-pointer -pipe" DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles" FEATURES="autoaddcvs ccache distlocks sandbox" GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://ftp.snt.utwente.nl/pub/os/linux/gentoo ftp://ftp.snt.utwente.nl/pub/os/linux/gentoo http://linux.rz.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/download/gentoo-mirror/ ftp://linux.rz.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/gentoo-mirror/" MAKEOPTS="-j2" PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages" PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp" PORTDIR="/usr/portage" PORTDIR_OVERLAY="" SYNC="rsync://rsync.europe.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage" USE="X acpi alsa apm arts avi berkdb bitmap-fonts cddb cdr crypt cups dvd dvdr dvdread encode esd f77 foomaticdb gdbm gif gnome gpm gtk gtk2 imlib innodbjava joystick jpeg kde libg++ libwww live mad mbox mikmod mmx mmx2 motif mozilla mpeg mysql nagios-dns nagios-ntp nagios-ping nagios-ssh ncurses network nls oggvorbis opengl oss pam pcmcia pdflib perl png python qt quicktime readline rtc samba sdl slang spell sse sse2 ssl svga tcltk tcpd truetype x86 xml2 xmms xprint xv zlib linguas_de"
There was a bug where "emerge -u package" would add package to the world file, but that has been fixed. Emerge has never, afaik, added packages to world file upon running "emerge -u world". I checked my world file just now to be certain and have nothing in there that I haven't explicitly merged. If you can show evidence that this is otherwise on your system or are able to tell us how to reproduce the behaviour, please reopen.
