@MischievousTomato
>circular deps
never had this issue except for a few packages where the preinst will actually warn you about this. youre probably thinking of its dependency resolution in general which can be a bitch. i do partial upgrades on systems all the time and by now i'm just used to the language portage speaks. could def be smarter but meh i've never had a gentoo system irreparably break on me

meanwhile ive bricked debian before where apt refuses to do anything