% emerge --version Portage 2.2.01.18706-prefix (prefix/linux/amd64, gcc-4.5.2, unavailable, 2.6.9-55.ELsmp x86_64) Sev: major, I was able to configure my portage to die all the time. I suspect some poor handling of the "The following mask changes are necessary to proceed" code. Here is why: 1) I have a package that consistently fails to build. That is sys-apps/dbus, so I masked every version in the tree because I have *one* version that works that is currently installed. 2) I added ">sys-apps/dbus-1.2.12" to etc/portage/package.mask 3) Tried to update world again, more complaints now. portage actually suggests to unmask dbus...how strange, I personally MASKED it, I don't want portage to unmask it. 3a) I expected portage to drop everything that depends on newer dbus that I don't have but instead, I am presented with more stuff: The following mask changes are necessary to proceed: #required by xfce-base/thunar-1.2.1[-dbus,xfce_plugins_trash], required by xfce-extra/thunar-archive-plugin-0.3.0, required by @selected, required by @world (argument) >=gnome-base/gvfs-1.6.7 #required by gnome-base/gvfs-1.6.7, required by xfce-base/thunar-1.2.1[-dbus,xfce_plugins_trash], required by xfce-extra/thunar-archive-plugin-0.3.0, required by @selected, required by @world (argument) >=sys-apps/dbus-1.4.8 #required by @selected, required by @world (argument) >=xfce-extra/thunar-archive-plugin-0.3.0 4) So, I mask everything. 5) % cat etc/portage/package.mask >sys-apps/dbus-1.2.12 >=gnome-base/gnome-keyring-2.32.1 >=gnome-base/libgnome-keyring-2.32.0 >=net-libs/libsoup-gnome-2.34.2 >=gnome-base/gvfs-1.6.7 >=xfce-base/thunar-1.2.2 >=xfce-extra/thunar-archive-plugin-0.3.0 6) Try to update again, no joy. portage dies with the same error message. 7) I consider this a regression introduced by new feature code because portage does not respect my local masks.
At a minimum, I guess we need to make the autounmask code suggest to use --autounmask=n so that it's easy for users to recognize that this is an option. You may want set --autounmask=n in EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS until you get your masks working like you want them to, or until you can get a more recent version of dbus to build.
I've added a note: http://git.overlays.gentoo.org/gitweb/?p=proj/portage.git;a=commit;h=d21811eec723ffc6acb1daf0e2d7b19bf3af6978 It looks like this: NOTE: This --autounmask behavior can be disabled by setting EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS="--autounmask=n" in make.conf. I suspect that this will be sufficient for general use, since the case of dealing with unsatisfied dependencies triggered by local masks only represents a minority of dependency calculations, and you can always set EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS="--autounmask=n" temporarily if you happen to find yourself in this mode. That said, it might also be nice to have the ability to do something like --autounmask-local-mask=n to disable autounmask just for local masks.
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 372485 ***