Quoting emninger@??? (emninger@???):

> I was away from the keyboard a very long time (had to work
> outside/outdoor for a life), so very likely i missed a lot. Sorry in
> anticipation if i'm doubling something:
>
> One system is/was running devuan ascii quite nicely but when i came
> back i did an 'apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade' and i
> realize(d), that openrc (which i was used to use) was removed. When i
> try to reinstall openrc, i see that nearly the complete system would be
> removed

I suggest you investigate what within this package's metadata causes that
proposed removal. E.g., what the Conflicts, Depends, Provides, etc.
lines are. You should have access to this data, whereas (speaking for
myself, at least) the rest of us don't even know what version you're
seeking to install.

I spent a few minutes looking at
https://packages.devuan.org/devuan/dists/*.Packages.gz files trying to
get that information, but didn't find it.