There is no man page for /usr/sbin/fixpackages and I can't find anything in the online documentation either. There is only a tiny paragraph describing the *feature* called fixpackages in make.conf(5), but the details about what this feature (and script?) does and why or when it should be done are absent. Additionally, calling "fixpackages --help" doesn't give any help either. Instead it just seams to start doing its work. Expected result: All scripts in sys-apps/portage have a man-page and honor the "standard" options --help and --version.
The fixpackages script does what that entry in make.conf man page says: "script that will fix the dependencies in all binary packages" Also a hint why dependencies might be broken and need fixing: "run whenever packages are moved around in the portage tree" You are not the only one who can't find anything about fixpackages in the excellent online Gentoo docs, but I think this could be a good place for it to be added: http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml?part=3&chap=4
This is about a missing Portage manpage. If you Portage guys feel that it's GDP's turn to document this in the Handbook, just re-assign it back to us. See you.
In portage-2.2_rc the fixpackages functionality is available as `emaint --fix movebin`, so we might consider dropping fixpackages and updating the messages to suggest emaint instead of fixpackages. The emaint manpage currently only mentions "all" and "world" targets, so we should update it to document the new targets that have been added in portage-2.2_rc.
Is there any reason to keep fixpackages?
(In reply to comment #4) > Is there any reason to keep fixpackages? No, let's remove it.
if fixpakages will get removed its no need for me to make a bug more for it, sys-apps/portage (fixpakages) does need python compiled with ssl to work in stable amd64, thats a know issue for me, but its not a killing ground :)
FEATURES="fixpackages" has been removed. Closing.