portage not picking up flags from package.use [SOLVED]

[_Max_]

For some reason portage does not seem to be picking up my per-package useflags from package.use

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# cat /etc/portage/package.use 
www-client/elinks -guile

# emerge -pv elinks

These are the packages that I would merge, in order:

Calculating dependencies ...done!
[ebuild     U ] www-client/elinks-0.10.5 [0.10.4] +X +gpm +guile +ipv6 -lua +ssl +zlib 0 kB 

Total size of downloads: 0 kB

It still works like this, though:

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# USE=-guile emerge -pv elinks

These are the packages that I would merge, in order:

Calculating dependencies ...done!
[ebuild     U ] www-client/elinks-0.10.5 [0.10.4] +X +gpm -guile* +ipv6 -lua +ssl +zlib 0 kB 

Total size of downloads: 0 kB

/etc/portage/package.use used to work for me - how did I manage to break it this time?

Thanks.

(portage-2.0.51.22-r1)

[gentsquash]

I'm clutching at straws here... Is it possible that your
USE env-var is set? You could try

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export USE=
emerge -pv elinks 

What is the result of

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ls -l /etc/portage/package.use 

Mine has these permissions and owner/group:

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-rw-r--r--  1 root root 1471 Jul 12 15:11 /etc/portage/package.use

Portage has config files that set variables which determine where
various portage-files are searched-for. E.g, file /etc/make.globals has lines

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...
# Repository Paths
PORTDIR=/usr/portage
DISTDIR=/usr/portage/distfiles
PKGDIR=/usr/portage/packages
RPMDIR=/usr/portage/rpm
...

I didn't see a variable that specifies where USE-variables are to
be read-from, but one of Portage's configs could have such.

Did you change profiles recently? Did you change config files
recently with dispatch-conf or etc-update ?

================

Does the problem only occur with USE-flag guile (by the way, it
is not too surprising that a flag named guile might behave in a
sneaky way...) or only the www-client/elinks pkg?

[_Max_]

After various experiments, I found that it was that comments did not work as I expected in package.use:

I had something like this
www-client/elinks -guile # removed guile 2004/12/15

Apparently, the second guile (without the minus) switches it back on. The bit after the # is not actually commented out. The syntax highlighting in app-vim/gentoo-syntax seems to suggest otherwise.

I think this is rather strange behaviour.

[gentsquash]

I'm bewildered. Your first posting showed

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# cat /etc/portage/package.use 
www-client/elinks -guile

and does not show a "# removed guile 2004/12/15"?!

At a minimum, you should use ... or some other convention, to indicate
elided material. I read your first post to mean that your
/etc/portage/package.use file literally had one line in it,
exactly the line that you posted.

I'm a little annoyed because I spent a fair amount of time
wracking my brain, and searching Portage config files for you,
trying to find an explanation of what you had posted.

I'm not at all saying that one shouldn't ever omit output, but it
is good to indicate the omission. (I'm certainly not advocating
these enormous postings of /usr/src/linux/.config files, with the
repetition of all the comments that we all have in our own
.config files.)

I'm glad the problem is solved for you, and this thread will be a useful reference for all of us; I've gotten tangled up by USE flags myself. If you agree that your thread is [SOLVED], could you mark it so?

[_Max_]

That's because I thought it was a comment and hence irrelevant. How wrong I was... sorry about that. Thanks for your help.

[gentsquash]

(Il n'y a rien de grave.)

Just to assault a deceased equine mammal ..., my impression from
reading the Forums is that folks use cat to specifically indicate
that what follows is the literal contents of the file.

Yes, different config-files and different languages have
differing rules for what constitutes a comment. A number of them
give a special interpretation to a character at the beginning of
a line.

Were you to suggest that having a more-consistent overall
comment-structure would be a good idea, you'd get no carping
from me...

[_Max_]

Especially since the manpage seems to suggest that the correct way to comment package.use is with hashes.

package.use
Per-package USE flags. Useful for tracking local USE
flags or for enabling USE flags for certain packages
only. Perhaps you develop GTK and thus you want documen-
tation for it, but you don't want documentation for QT.
Easy as pie my friend!

Format:
- comments begin with #
- one DEPEND atom per line with space-delimited USE flags

I did put something into the bugzilla.

[gentsquash]

I did put something into the bugzilla.

Good for you... many folks are unwilling to make the extra
effort of posting a clear bug-report. May I suggest that you
post the link to your bug-report, since this thread will be a
good reference.

[_Max_]

I posted this here: Poor handling of /etc/portage/package.use errors since this seems to be an issue with input validation/ parsing. If the comment had produced an error message, the root of the problem would have been very easy to spot.

[canal]

Format:
- comments begin with #
- one DEPEND atom per line with space-delimited USE flags

I did put something into the bugzilla.

Now I'm confused: this is quite correct explanation. You have two choices: "comment" (start it with # ) or "DEPEND atom with space-delimited USE flags". No way to produce line with DEPEND atom and comment on single line!

Since it's quite common convention (I think there are more files in /etc where you can not start comment in the middle of line then files where you can) I fail to see your point...

[_Max_]

Well, I read the fact that these two items are in a bulleted list as meaning that they are to be combined with an "and/or", not an "exclusive or". This would be the same commenting convention as in python, perl, bash, C/C++ etc. My interpretation is also the one indicated by app-vim/gentoo-syntax syntax highlighting, by the way. Hence my confusion.

In any case, if portage is meant to work according to your interpretation (this is the way it works!), I think it would be nice if it could tell you when you have a malformed line in a config file, rather than quietly trying to make sense of what it is you wrote, don't you think?