Today, after updating my server, emerge --depclean wanted to remove python-updater. This server is updated every week. The last update was a week ago. The server has been running for 6 straight years. This never happened before. Has python-updater become obsolete? I can't find anything about it on the net, except one old article on the Funtoo website: http://www.funtoo.org/News:Python_Updater_Deprecation Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. emerge --sync 2. emerge -uDN world 3. etc-update 4. python-updater && perl-cleaner --all && revdep-rebuild 5. emerge --depclean -p * Always study the list of packages to be cleaned for any obvious * mistakes. Packages that are part of the world set will always * be kept. They can be manually added to this set with * `emerge --noreplace <atom>`. Packages that are listed in * package.provided (see portage(5)) will be removed by * depclean, even if they are part of the world set. * * As a safety measure, depclean will not remove any packages * unless *all* required dependencies have been resolved. As a * consequence of this, it often becomes necessary to run * `emerge --update --newuse --deep @world` prior to depclean. Calculating dependencies... done! >>> Calculating removal order... >>> These are the packages that would be unmerged: app-admin/python-updater selected: 0.14 protected: none omitted: none All selected packages: =app-admin/python-updater-0.14 >>> 'Selected' packages are slated for removal. >>> 'Protected' and 'omitted' packages will not be removed. Packages installed: 460 Packages in world: 60 Packages in system: 44 Required packages: 459 Number to remove: 1 Actual Results: python-updater would be removed. Expected Results: python-updater would NOT be removed. emerge --info Portage 2.2.28 (python 2.7.10-final-0, default/linux/amd64/13.0, gcc-4.9.3, glibc-2.22-r4, 4.4.6-gentoo x86_64) ================================================================= System uname: Linux-4.4.6-gentoo-x86_64-AMD_Athlon-tm-_Dual_Core_Processor_4850e-with-gentoo-2.2 KiB Mem: 1794100 total, 129264 free KiB Swap: 2097148 total, 1876532 free Timestamp of repository gentoo: Sun, 31 Jul 2016 08:45:01 +0000 sh bash 4.3_p42-r1 ld GNU ld (Gentoo 2.25.1 p1.1) 2.25.1 app-shells/bash: 4.3_p42-r1::gentoo dev-lang/perl: 5.20.2::gentoo dev-lang/python: 2.7.10-r1::gentoo, 3.4.3-r1::gentoo dev-util/cmake: 3.3.1-r1::gentoo dev-util/pkgconfig: 0.28-r2::gentoo sys-apps/baselayout: 2.2::gentoo sys-apps/openrc: 0.19.1::gentoo sys-apps/sandbox: 2.10-r1::gentoo sys-devel/autoconf: 2.69::gentoo sys-devel/automake: 1.14.1::gentoo, 1.15::gentoo sys-devel/binutils: 2.25.1-r1::gentoo sys-devel/gcc: 4.9.3::gentoo sys-devel/gcc-config: 1.7.3::gentoo sys-devel/libtool: 2.4.6::gentoo sys-devel/make: 4.1-r1::gentoo sys-kernel/linux-headers: 4.3::gentoo (virtual/os-headers) sys-libs/glibc: 2.22-r4::gentoo Repositories: gentoo location: /usr/portage sync-type: rsync sync-uri: rsync://rsync.europe.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage priority: -1000 ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="amd64" ACCEPT_LICENSE="* -@EULA" CBUILD="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu" CFLAGS="-O2 -pipe" CHOST="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu" CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /var/bind" CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/ca-certificates.conf /etc/env.d /etc/fonts/fonts.conf /etc/gconf /etc/gentoo-release /etc/revdep-rebuild /etc/sandbox.d /etc/terminfo" CXXFLAGS="-O2 -pipe" DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles" FCFLAGS="-O2 -pipe" FEATURES="assume-digests binpkg-logs config-protect-if-modified distlocks ebuild-locks fixlafiles merge-sync news parallel-fetch preserve-libs protect-owned sandbox sfperms strict unknown-features-warn unmerge-logs unmerge-orphans userfetch userpriv usersandbox usersync xattr" FFLAGS="-O2 -pipe" GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://ftp.snt.utwente.nl/pub/os/linux/gentoo" LANG="nl_NL.UTF-8" LDFLAGS="-Wl,-O1 -Wl,--as-needed" MAKEOPTS="-j2" PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages" PORTAGE_CONFIGROOT="/" PORTAGE_RSYNC_OPTS="--recursive --links --safe-links --perms --times --omit-dir-times --compress --force --whole-file --delete --stats --human-readable --timeout=180 --exclude=/distfiles --exclude=/local --exclude=/packages --exclude=/.git" PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp" USE="X509 acl amd64 apache2 berkdb branding bzip2 caps cdr cdrom cdrtools chroot cli conntrack cracklib crypt cryptsetup cxx dar64 device-mapper dlz dri dvd fortran gdbm gudev iconv imap introspection ipv6 kvm logrotate lvm mbox mmx mmxext modules multilib mysql ncurses network nls nptl openmp pam parted pcre php qemu readline rrdcgi rrdtool sasl seccomp sensord server session smime snmp spice sse sse2 ssl svg syslog tcpd threads threadsafe truetype udev unicode vde vim vim-pager vim-syntax virt-network virtual-users vnc webdav xattr xml zlib" ABI_X86="64" ALSA_CARDS="ali5451 als4000 atiixp atiixp-modem bt87x ca0106 cmipci emu10k1x ens1370 ens1371 es1938 es1968 fm801 hda-intel intel8x0 intel8x0m maestro3 trident usb-audio via82xx via82xx-modem ymfpci" APACHE2_MODULES="authn_core authz_core socache_shmcb unixd actions alias auth_basic authn_alias authn_anon authn_dbm authn_default authn_file authz_dbm authz_default authz_groupfile authz_host authz_owner authz_user autoindex cache cgi cgid dav dav_fs dav_lock deflate dir disk_cache env expires ext_filter file_cache filter headers include info log_config logio mem_cache mime mime_magic negotiation rewrite setenvif speling status unique_id userdir usertrack vhost_alias" CALLIGRA_FEATURES="kexi words flow plan sheets stage tables krita karbon braindump author" CAMERAS="ptp2" COLLECTD_PLUGINS="df interface irq load memory rrdtool swap syslog" CPU_FLAGS_X86="mmx mmxext sse sse2" ELIBC="glibc" GPSD_PROTOCOLS="ashtech aivdm earthmate evermore fv18 garmin garmintxt gpsclock itrax mtk3301 nmea ntrip navcom oceanserver oldstyle oncore rtcm104v2 rtcm104v3 sirf superstar2 timing tsip tripmate tnt ublox ubx" INPUT_DEVICES="keyboard mouse evdev" KERNEL="linux" L10N="nl de fr en en-US" LCD_DEVICES="bayrad cfontz cfontz633 glk hd44780 lb216 lcdm001 mtxorb ncurses text" LIBREOFFICE_EXTENSIONS="presenter-console presenter-minimizer" LINGUAS="nl de fr en en_US" OFFICE_IMPLEMENTATION="libreoffice" PHP_TARGETS="php5-5" PYTHON_SINGLE_TARGET="python2_7" PYTHON_TARGETS="python2_7 python3_4" QEMU_SOFTMMU_TARGETS="i386 x86_64" QEMU_USER_TARGETS="i386 x86_64" RUBY_TARGETS="ruby20 ruby21" USERLAND="GNU" VIDEO_CARDS="amdgpu fbdev intel nouveau radeon radeonsi vesa dummy v4l" XTABLES_ADDONS="quota2 psd pknock lscan length2 ipv4options ipset ipp2p iface geoip fuzzy condition tee tarpit sysrq steal rawnat logmark ipmark dhcpmac delude chaos account" Unset: CC, CPPFLAGS, CTARGET, CXX, EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS, INSTALL_MASK, LC_ALL, PORTAGE_BUNZIP2_COMMAND, PORTAGE_COMPRESS, PORTAGE_COMPRESS_FLAGS, PORTAGE_RSYNC_EXTRA_OPTS, USE_PYTHON
So, first of all, "emerge --depclean" doesn't care about which packages are deprecated or obsolete or whatever. It simply tries to remove anything that isn't explicitly needed by some other package on your system. In this case, it wants to remove python-updater, not because it's obsolete (although it is), but because it's no longer a dependency of dev-lang/python. It looks like the python team finally removed python-updater as a dependency of python itself yesterday: commit b7a4174e075a922a255c0ff4a6ebd4f6d0437c61 Author: Michał Górny <mgorny@gentoo.org> Date: Sat Jul 30 21:07:29 2016 +0200 dev-lang/python: Remove remnants of python-updater Remove the remaining dependencies on deprecated python-updater, and update the postinst messages appropriately. For Python 2.7, the message has been removed altogether since it is the oldest version supported by PYTHON_TARGETS. For the remaining versions, just inform about potential PYTHON_TARGETS changes necessary. The modified versions are not revision-bumped to avoid unnecessary rebuilds due to a minor change. The versions that are still newest-visible (i.e. not replaced by another version or revision bump) will be bumped when python-updater is lastrited. I'll let the python team respond, but I expect everything is going according to plan.
It's obsolete for a long time (pretty much since PYTHON_TARGETS become widespread), full of bugs and pretty much useless these days. It will be masked for removal soon. However, we are giving people a few more weeks to get it cleaned out of their systems to avoid any potential issues.
