Bug 292462 – emerge should mark visibly user-unmasked packages to be installed

• Product: Portage Development
• Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

[Description Vlastimil Babka (Caster) (RETIRED) 2009-11-09 00:46:45 UTC]

Here's an idea from a recent -dev thread, aiming to help in situations when users p.unmask (or ** keyword) a package because they want a particular version at the moment, but later forget about it and get a breakage from some future version that's still unmasked (such example being sys-auth/policykit)

- visibly distinguish (red color and stuff?) packages that are to be 
installed only thanks to package.unmask or ** in package.keywords

- print extra warnings about those entries in package.unmask and ** 
keywords that are not version restricted, if they contain the packages 
to be merged. This could follow the suggestion above - aside from the 
distinguished packages, below the list and above the yes/no (if --ask is 
used) there would be "Warning: the following packages have broad 
unmasks, you sure you want these versions?" and the list.

[Comment 1 Sebastian Luther (few) 2011-09-21 14:01:11 UTC]

(In reply to comment #0)
> [...]
> - visibly distinguish (red color and stuff?) packages that are to be 
> installed only thanks to package.unmask or ** in package.keywords
> 

We have that this some time.

> - print extra warnings about those entries in package.unmask and ** 
> keywords that are not version restricted, if they contain the packages 
> to be merged. This could follow the suggestion above - aside from the 
> distinguished packages, below the list and above the yes/no (if --ask is 
> used) there would be "Warning: the following packages have broad 
> unmasks, you sure you want these versions?" and the list.

This would easily get annoying and would then again need an option to disable it. I think the marker in the merge list is warning enough.