yac posted on Sun, 03 Nov 2013 11:11:00 +0100 as excerpted: > btw, is there a difference betwen world and @world or is just new > syntax?
Too short answer: New syntax. Middling answer: @world is now preferred, (bare) world support being retained for backward compatibility, both with people's "typing memory" and with the multitude of helper scripts most long-time gentooers have likely devised. Much longer and more detailed answer: With portage set support @world and @system (with the related @selected, @world being the combined @system and @selected, as well) are simply two of many available sets, all of which are prefixed with @ to denote the set status. They're the two most commonly used sets, with legacy aliases without the @ prefix, sure, but they are sets just like other available sets, and the @ prefix makes that clear and keeps set notation obvious. The prefixless variants are special-case backward compatibility notation for these sets only, and use is discouraged[1] as it's inconsistent with the rules for other sets, but it remains available, /purely/ for backward compatibility. Presumably at some point in the far future those backward compatibility aliases could be removed, but I don't think anyone's considering that for anything remotely close to current portage -- at this point it's "bluesky", something that "might be nice, someday", but nothing that they'll do any time soon, as it's too soon to break that backward compatibility. Note[1]: The emerge manpage does not even mention the prefixless variants, saying: "When used as arguments to emerge sets have to be prefixed with @ to be recognized." Unfortunately the handbook apparently hasn't been updated to cover sets or the @world form at all, so the handbook (part 2, Working with Gentoo, chapter 1, A Portage Introduction, doc_chapter 3, Maintaining Software) still uses the bare world form, and there appears to be no discussion of sets (presumably as a new "Portage Sets" chapter in part 3, Working with Portage) at all. =:^( -- Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs. "Every nonfree program has a lord, a master -- and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman
