On 07/23/2014 09:59 AM, gottl...@nyu.edu wrote: > > This must be wrong since my procedure does sometimes offer to update > non-world packages
... > I would still want to know if the executing the last emerge command is > wise and also would like to understand what my update world procedure > is actually doing. I think all you're missing is the build-time dependencies. If one package needs another (say, cmake) to build but not to run, then portage won't update it by default when you update @world. You can change that behavior by passing --with-bdeps to emerge. >From `man emerge`: --with-bdeps < y | n > In dependency calculations, pull in build time dependencies that are not strictly required. This defaults to ´n´ for installation actions, meaning they will not be installed, and ´y´ for the --depclean action, meaning they will not be removed. This set‐ ting can be added to EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS (see make.conf(5)) and later overridden via the command line.