The default usage message of emerge is incorrect. This message is printed when emerge is called with no arguments, and also appears at the top of 'emerge --help' output. The usage message makes reference to a 'help' action which is apparently ignored by emerge. With Portage 2.0.48, the usage message is the following: $ emerge emerge: please tell me what to do. Usage: emerge [ options ] [ action ] [ ebuildfile | tbz2file | dependency ] [ ... ] emerge [ options ] [ action ] < system | world > emerge < sync | info > emerge --resume [--pretend | --skipfirst] emerge help [ system | config | sync ] Options: -[bcCdDefhikKlnoOpPsSuUvV] [--oneshot] [--noconfmem] [--columns] [--nospinner] Actions: [ clean | depclean | inject | prune | regen | search | unmerge ] For more help try 'emerge --help' or consult the man page. -- Note the command 'emerge help [ system | config | sync ]'. Instead of printing help, the commands attempt to merge packages named 'system', 'config', or 'sync'. The 'help' argument is apparently ignored. Help information is correctly outputted using e.g. 'emerge --help system'. The man page also makes reference to the help action (line 97): help (-h) Displays help information for emerge. Adding one of the addi- tional arguments listed above will give you more specific help information on that subject. The internal emerge help documen- tation is updated more frequently than this man page; check it out if you are having problems that this man page does not help resolve. This issue was initially mentioned in bug 16532. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Run 'emerge help system' 2. Run 'emerge help config' 3. Run 'emerge help sync' Actual Results: $ emerge help system Calculating dependencies emerge: there are no masked or unmasked ebuilds to satisfy "system". !!! Error calculating dependencies. Please correct. $ emerge help config Calculating dependencies emerge: there are no masked or unmasked ebuilds to satisfy "config". !!! Error calculating dependencies. Please correct. $ emerge help sync Calculating dependencies emerge: there are no masked or unmasked ebuilds to satisfy "sync". !!! Error calculating dependencies. Please correct. Expected Results: emerge should either have printed help for the appropriate component (system, config, or sync), i.e. the output of 'emerge --help [ system | config | sync ]'. Portage 2.0.48 (default-x86-1.4, gcc-3.2.2, glibc-2.3.1-r4) ================================================================= System uname: 2.4.20 i686 AMD Athlon(tm) XP 2000+ GENTOO_MIRRORS="ftp://ftp.gtlib.cc.gatech.edu/pub/gentoo http://csociety-ftp.ecn.purdue.edu/pub/gentoo http://gentoo.oregonstate.edu ftp://mirror.iawnet.sandia.gov/pub/gentoo ftp://ftp.ussg.iu.edu/pub/linux/gentoo http://www.ibiblio.org/gentoo" CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /var/qmail/control /usr/kde/2/share/config /usr/kde/3/share/config /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xkb /usr/kde/3.1/share/config /usr/share/config" CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/gconf /etc/env.d" PORTDIR="/usr/portage" DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles" PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages" PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp" PORTDIR_OVERLAY="" USE="oss apm crypt kde libg++ libwww mikmod nls quicktime spell xmms zlib gdbm berkdb slang svga java guile sdl gpm tcpd pam esd qt motif mozilla x86 3dnow mmx aalib cdr cups fbcon maildir ncurses pda readline ssl perl python postgresql xml xml2 X xv gtk gtkhtml gnome -arts truetype gif imlib jpeg pdflib png tiff avi dvd encode mpeg opengl oggvorbis" COMPILER="gcc3" CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu" CFLAGS="-mcpu=athlon-xp -O3 -pipe" CXXFLAGS="-mcpu=athlon-xp -O3 -pipe" ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86" MAKEOPTS="-j1" AUTOCLEAN="yes" SYNC="rsync://rsync.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage" FEATURES="sandbox ccache"
I removed the help action, only --help is used in the code, the help and the manpage now.
This appears to be fixed in 2.0.51. Thanks.
