Description of the issue by me: There are packages a and b. a-0 requires at least b-0, a-1 requires at least b-1, and a-2 requires c. a-2 and b-1 is masked. If you want to install _some_ a, portage defaults to highest unmasked version, and that is a-1. It then tries to resolve the dependency on b. Only b-1 falls into the possible range, and portage says that b-1 is masked. However, it does not say that there is a-0 (and the dependency of a-0 is not masked), nor that there is a-2 (and that a-2's dependency is also available). It is reasonably possible to report that. The information portage reports is asymmetrical. It goes to great detail about b but it only says which version of a it picked. And shorter more technical summary by Jason Stubbs: When there is a child atom that cannot be resolved to a child package, you want to know what atom brought the parent package in and what other possible packages might satisfy that atom?
heh, we had the same idea at the same time, it seems ;) *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 137562 ***
