Bug 3253 – Portage RFE: Minor User Interface Tweaks

• Product: Portage Development
• Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

[Description Bruce A. Locke (RETIRED) 2002-05-31 03:06:10 UTC]

1.  The messages Portage relays to users could use a little cleaning up and 
clarifying... 

Example: 

blocke@slug portage $ emerge foo 
!!! to be able to perform the requested action, emerge must be run by root. 

should be something like: 

blocke@slug portage $ emerge foo 
emerge: Requested action requires root privileges 

Another example: when something is package.masked'd out, the error message
should say its package.mask'd and which package.mask or profile blocks it... (is
this possible without major rewriting?)

2.  We currently add things to the world profile and virtuals through 
emerge but provide no way to view or remove entries without editing the 
files directly.  I recommend adding the following:

For virtuals: 

emerge --virtual add cat/foo  (formerly 'inject') 
emerge --virtual add cat/foo what/satisfysit 
emerge --virtual remove cat/foo 
emerge --virtual list 

The virtual system could also provide a way for users to block the installation
of a particular package if the user prefers to have their own version installed.

For world profile: 

emerge --world add cat/foo 
emerge --world add =x11-misc/foo-1.2.3   (easy way to pin a version) 
emerge --world remove cat/foo 
emerge --world list

[Comment 1 Daniel Robbins (RETIRED) 2002-09-03 12:53:41 UTC]

Message clean-ups are happening. World and virtual tweakage not yet added.

[Comment 2 Charles Goodwin 2003-12-13 16:18:32 UTC]

It would have happened by now if the intention was there.  Perhaps something to note for portage-ng, in which case you should check it out:
http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/portage/