diff between portage and worldset

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Portage and the World Set are two distinct concepts in the Gentoo Linux ecosystem, and they serve different purposes:

Portage is the package manager used in Gentoo Linux. It is responsible for handling the installation, upgrading, and removal of software packages on your Gentoo system.

Portage maintains a database of available packages and their dependencies, which is referred to as the Portage tree.

It uses ebuilds, which are specially crafted scripts that describe how to build and install software packages. These ebuilds contain metadata about the package, its dependencies, and installation instructions.

Portage is responsible for resolving and managing dependencies between packages, ensuring that all required libraries and dependencies are installed correctly.

You interact with Portage through the command line using commands like emerge to install or update packages.

The World Set, often referred to as "@world," is a concept used within Gentoo to represent the set of packages that are explicitly selected and installed on your system. These are the packages that you have explicitly requested to be installed, either through direct installation commands or by adding them to your world file.

The world set includes packages that you consider essential or that you want to keep up to date. It is a user-managed list of packages.

When you perform updates using commands like emerge -avuDN @world , you are updating the packages in your World Set.

In summary, Portage is the package manager itself, responsible for package management tasks, while the World Set is a user-managed list of packages that you want to keep track of and potentially update. Portage uses the World Set as a reference when you instruct it to update packages, ensuring that only the packages you care about are updated while respecting your system's specific package selections.