How do you use system variables (is that the right term?)

Message

wilburpan · Post by **wilburpan** » Sat Apr 10, 2004 2:43 am

I was going about getting OpenOffice.org-1.1.1 to emerge by using this command:

FEATURES="-sandbox" emerge -u openoffice

and then it hit me: I know that I can set variables without going and editing a configuration file by setting the variable in the command line like I did above, but I don't know how long this lasts.

So if I do this:

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FEATURES="-sandbox" emerge -u openoffice

[wait for long compile to finish]

emerge kickassprogram

Does kickassprogram get emerged with FEATURES="-sandbox" as well? And if I didn't want FEATURES="-sandbox", how would I go about resetting FEATURES to the default setting?

NitroPye · Post by **NitroPye** » Sat Apr 10, 2004 2:47 am

You can change specific portage variables for instance FEATURES or USE via /etc/make.conf just taker out sandbox on the features section.

smiley · Post by **smiley** » Sat Apr 10, 2004 3:38 am

So if I do this:
Code:
FEATURES="-sandbox" emerge -u openoffice

[wait for long compile to finish]

emerge kickassprogram

Does kickassprogram get emerged with FEATURES="-sandbox" as well? And if I didn't want FEATURES="-sandbox", how would I go about resetting FEATURES to the default setting?

No it does not. You basically have three options:

FEATURES="-sandbox" emerge -u openoffice only applies to the current emerge, in this case openoffice.

You can also do as NitroPye explained, and that applies to all emerges.

Third, you can execute

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 export FEATURES="-sandbox"

This would apply to all emerges durring your current login session. When you log out, that setting will be lost.

EDIT: If you use the export command, you can use unset to remove that variable

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unset FEATURES

smiley

wilburpan · Post by **wilburpan** » Sat Apr 10, 2004 11:26 am

Thanks -- that was what I was looking for.

One other question -- is there a way for me to see what FEATURES is currently set to? I'm anticipating a situation where I've forgotten what I've exported to a variable.

adrenalin · Post by **adrenalin** » Sat Apr 10, 2004 1:50 pm

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emerge info

to your seceond question from the topic: the right term would be 'environment variables'

hth

tomk · Post by **tomk** » Sat Apr 10, 2004 2:16 pm

wilburpan wrote:One other question -- is there a way for me to see what FEATURES is currently set to? I'm anticipating a situation where I've forgotten what I've exported to a variable.

You can see the value of any environment variable using the echo command:

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echo $FEATURES

In this case if you haven't exported it then it will be blank because /etc/make.conf only gets sourced when you're doing an emerge.