portage.mask: >sys-power/pm-utils-0.99.4 #>x11-misc/qterm-0.5.2-r1 =app-misc/screen-9999-r1 >sys-libs/libraw1394-1.2.1 net-www/mplayerplug-in Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: emerge -uDN world Actual Results: !!! The following installed packages are masked: - net-www/mplayerplug-in-3.50 (masked by: package.mask) /etc/portage/package.mask: #>x11-misc/qterm-0.5.2-r1 For more information, see the MASKED PACKAGES section in the emerge man page or refer to the Gentoo Handbook. Expected Results: !!! The following installed packages are masked: - net-www/mplayerplug-in-3.50 (masked by: package.mask) /etc/portage/package.mask: net-www/mplayerplug-in For more information, see the MASKED PACKAGES section in the emerge man page or refer to the Gentoo Handbook.
Portage is trying to apply the same code it uses to find the comment with the reason for the mask in the profile package.mask to the user-created package.mask. It's not really doing anything "wrong" here. Perhaps portage could just ignore comments that look like they have atoms after the #, but that just adds more overhead, and I really don't think it's necessary.
It's working as intended. As for filtering, that's tricky as comments can also contain atoms for description purposes (including on separate lines), and it's hard to draw the line in some cases, e.g. # masked because it depends on the not-yet stable # >cat/foo-2: #>cat/bar-1.2 =cat/bar-2* So at best I'd say filtering should only match comments that ONLY contain atoms.
*** Bug 261858 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Simply add a blank line after you comment out an atom, to separate it from other comments.