I installed KDE 3.1 beta 2 by unmasking the packages and emerging it. After an emerge rsync, which masked the packages again, emerge -p --update world wanted to install KDE 3.0.3a. IMO, a previous version of a package should never be installed automatically, even if the installed version is masked.
this sometimes makes sense and sometimes it does not ... if a newer package is severly broken/security issues/etc ... then forcing an old version would be favorable ...
I would think that if the user can unmask the package and install it they should understand this and know when they want to go back. If a package that's masked by default is installed, it's almost certain that the user wants it and not an earlier version. If they do, they can emerge that themselves - I think emerge -u world is more dangerous like this.
i was refering to a package a developer unmasked then found out later it was 'bad' ... thus by masking it the developer knows that it will probably be taken care of but you are right that the current masking system is not very good, so a new one is being devised
if you want to keep the rc packages installed, either inject the older ones or pin the newer ones *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 2767 ***
