Packages blocking in Gentoo

results into a block with aspell.

emerge wants to update app/dicts/aspell-en-6.0.0 [0.51.1]
wants to install new app-text/aspell-0.60.5
and blocks: app-dicts/aspell-en-0.5* (is blocking app-text/aspell-0.60.5


What am I doing wrong?

That's ok.
Just unmerge apsell-en-0.5* & emerge spell-en-6.0.0:

# emerge -C aspell-en && emerge -1 aspell-en

=========
For blocking packages in KDE check http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/kde-config.xml

Code Listing 4.1: Removing KDE 3.4 packages

# emerge --unmerge =arts-3.4* =kdelibs-3.4* =kdebase-3.4* ...

Obviously this is very frustrating if you have many KDE packages installed. However this operation can be automated in many ways. The following one is an example.

First we list all the packages that we want to remove. We use the equery command for this, part of the app-portage/gentoolkit package:

Code Listing 4.2: Listing packages to remove

(List all the installed KDE packages) # equery list kde-base/ (List all the installed KDE packages and select the ones from KDE 3.4) # equery list kde-base/ | grep 3\.4

At this point you should double-check that the list corresponds to the packages that should be removed from the system. If you think it is ok, you can go on and pass the list to the emerge --unmerge command.

Code Listing 4.3: Removing selected packages

# equery list kde-base/ | grep 3\.4 | xargs emerge --unmerge --pretend

Check again the output and reissue the command without --pretend to start the unmerging process.

Gentoo Linux Kernel Upgrade Guide

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/kernel-upgrade.xml

Gentoo Upgrade

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml?part=2&chap=1

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/gentoo-upgrading.xml

Updating your System

To keep your system in perfect shape (and not to mention install the latest security updates) you need to update your system regularly. Since Portage only checks the ebuilds in your Portage tree you first have to update your Portage tree. When your Portage tree is updated, you can update your system with emerge --update world. In the next example, we'll also use the --ask switch which will tell Portage to display the list of packages it wants to upgrade and ask you if you want to continue:

Code Listing 13: Updating your system

# emerge --update --ask world

Portage will then search for newer version of the applications you have installed. However, it will only verify the versions for the applications you have explicitly installed - not the dependencies. If you want to update every single package on your system, add the --deep argument:

Code Listing 14: Updating your entire system

# emerge --update --deep world

Since security updates also happen in packages you have not explicitly installed on your system (but that are pulled in as dependencies of other programs), it is recommended to run this command once in a while.

If you have altered any of your USE flags lately you might want to add --newuse as well. Portage will then verify if the change requires the installation of new packages or recompilation of existing ones:

Code Listing 15: Performing a full update

# emerge --update --deep --newuse world