World Package List Out-of-Date

[DontPanic]

I've had a problem in both the 3.3 Mini CD Version and the 3.4e DVD version where my World package list is missing a large chunk of installed packages.

On my freshly installed 3.4e version, /var/lib/portage/world only contains 1,162 entries. But if I do

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equery -C -q list | less

I get 1,842 entries. Many of the missing packages are old, stale packages no longer in Gentoo's or Sabayon's portage tree. Others are active packages that have updates, but a world update won't pick up on packages not in the world file.

Has anybody found a way to get these packages into the world list? I checked the Gentoo forums, but the methods I found were all out-dated.

[wolfden]

You want to rebuild your world file??

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regenworld

[DontPanic]

Ah, I probably should have mentioned in my original post that I have tried 'regenworld' without success.

[voxiac]

I get 1,842 entries. Many of the missing packages are old, stale packages no longer in Gentoo's or Sabayon's portage tree. Others are active packages that have updates, but a world update won't pick up on packages not in the world file.

Has anybody found a way to get these packages into the world list? I checked the Gentoo forums, but the methods I found were all out-dated.

Why would you want to have *all* the packages in your world file? (I myself always try to move in the opposite direction )

And a world update of course *will* update packages that are not in the world file as long as they are depended by packages already in the world file.

[DontPanic]

OK, I can see how you'd want a 'world' tag that covers most of your system to accompany the 'system' tag that I assume is for the core files. That way, when you update your 'world', you get a more comprehensive update than for 'system', but leave out the unimportant stuff.

I guess I was just assuming that the 'world' tag would include all packages. This wouldn't be the first time I've misunderstood portage.

I guess what I was trying to accomplish by filling out my 'world' package list was to find a way to identify those old packages that have been abandoned from the portage tree. What are some other ways to accomplish that?

I've been doing it manually by generating an aged list of installed packages. I was looking for a simpler method.

[voxiac]

The basic idea of the world file is that you have the packages that you know you need there, then by setting apropriate USE flags you let emerge take care of dependencies of those packages. Actually those entries should be rather called "packages' dependency specifications". Anyways try running:

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emerge --depclean --pretend

And see what emerge suggests you to nuke. Then you go through that list, add entries, you want to keep, to your world file, check the results by running the command again, and rerun without '--pretend' (remember to revdep-rebuild just in case).
Also 'udept' tool could be of some interest:

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emerge udept
dep -h

(To clean up world file 'dep -w' could be used, but take extra care)