Firts, this is not a duplicate of bug 84617. ;-) Well this idea starts from the split of kde-meta package. I agree with it but in any case my opinion wasn't opinion of rest of the world ;-). But spirit of Gentoo is to gives users the possibility to manage their system from A to Z. And that's why I submit this idea. As we can manage specific useflags, masking or keywords, I think we can manage meta-package. For example by creating an "/etc/portage/user-meta" (or maybe "/usr/local/portage/user-meta" would be more appropriate) directory where we can create our meta-package files. In each files on it (named as we want) we add packages we want to see as part of meta-package. An example to explain : I buy a printer; I create a "/usr/local/portage/user-meta/printing" file where I put : net-print/cups net-print/cups-pdf net-print/gnome-cups-manager media-gfx/gimp-print net-print/hpijs Then "emerge user-meta/printing" will install all packages listed in this file (and put them on "/var/lib/portage/world" for normal managements of dependencies and upgrades). Advantage is that we can choose meta-package, with all this imply : unmerging meta-packages will really clean our system (with clean "world" file); adding/removing file to meta-package or meta-package file is easy (wanna try fluxbox, ok I add it on my "/usr/local/portage/user-meta/my-wm" et voila ...). I don't know if it's kind of feature is hard to add but there's no need to add useflag or portage option or anything else ... Just "emerge `cat /usr/local/portage/user-meta/printing`" for installing meta-package, "emerge -C blabla" to uninstall etc. Real problem is if I delete a "user-meta" file without unmerging it, every package stay on the "world" file. So a list of all meta-file has to be stored (with its contents) when emerging it (for example in "/var/lib/portage/meta") and when "depcleaning" system a comparison between this file and files in user-meta directory as to be done to unmerge non-needed packages. So, that's it. Sorry for this so loooong post and for my poor english. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce:
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 6411 ***
Sorry for duplicate bug report ... I didn't find the 6411 bug which is quite the same as mine. But in any case, this idea is "on air". ;)
