Alan, On Monday, 2021-07-26 19:01:21 +0000, you wrote:
> ... > The warning was not very explicit. An explicit warning would have said > "--depclean is capable of removing critical system packages". As it > happened I didn't ignore the warning. But some people might. > > You seem to see nothing wrong with an OS being one keypress away from > destroying itself. I do. You mentioned in an earlier post that you not only got this warning for "openrc" but also for "nano". I remember that after my first Gentoo in- stall ever, I explicitly emerged the packages "vim" (as an emergency fallback) and -- more importantly -- "XEmacs" which were thus added to "@world". I then ran my very first "emerge --ask --depclean" and got that warning about "nano". I do not remember the exact wording, but -- honestly -- I was startled. Not very explicit? When "emerge" is tell- ing me that removing "nano" might result in my system becoming unusable? Or something to that effect? Being a Gentoo novice then, I immediately replied "n", researched the webs, and then with a bit more knowledge and conscience I rerun "emerge --ask --depclean" and bravely typed "y". You were startled, too, when reading that warning, so where exactly is the problem? Had I wanted a third editor I'd have stuffed "nano" into "@world", but I didn't. Since you want "openrc", you should. And yes, some people tend to ignore warnings. In particular, if there are just too many of them. I remember when back in the old days plenty of sources suggested to put "alias rm='rm -i'" into one's profile. I always objected to this, because you'd get so used to typing "y" to the plethora of questions that you'd have an excellent chance to miss the one file which would have been worth retaining. So the most important rule when working with computers still is "Read carefully, think carefully, then type carefully". More warnings, bigger fonts or red colour simply don't cut it. Or are you skimming your "gcc" compilation logs after doing your weekly Gentoo upgrade for every warn- ing in order to then check the source code to see whether or not you should do anything about it? I don't. My two cents ... Sincerely, Rainer
