On 12/12/2012 06:53 AM, Francesco Turco wrote: > Hello. > > A couple of weeks ago I filed a bug because in the Installation Handbook > I found some references of the "world" set in emerge commands, as > opposed to "@world": https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=445184 > > The bug was closed as invalid, and I was told that: > >> sets with the @ prefix are a portage-2.2 feature, which is still hardmasked >> and thus not documented. > > The fact is that I have portage-2.1.11.37, not 2.2, and man emerge says: > >> When used as arguments to emerge sets have to be prefixed with @ to be >> recognized. > > One possibility is that documentation stick with the stable portage > package, not the testing one (I have a ~amd64 system only). But I > checked portage 2.1.11.31 (the latest stable amd64 portage package > version) and the previous phrase is there, too. > > I know it's not a very important issue, but I'd still like to know if > I'm wrong or not, and why. >
IMO you aren't wrong, but it isn't fixable right now. I see your point: using @system and @world is more consistent, and eliminates an additional thing that you have to remember. But right now, 'system' and 'world' are simply hard-coded magic strings. Until that changes, using @system and @world really conflates two different ideas: the magic system/world, and the portage-2.2 @sets. Some day they may be unified if we can, 1. Move $PORTDIR/profiles/base/packages into @system 2. Move /var/lib/portage/world into @world 3. Not break everything in the process (this is the hard part) Afterwards I think they would be more receptive to updating the docs.
