These work: $ emerge -p /etc/sudoers $ cd /etc; emerge -p ./sudoers This doesn't: $ cd /usr; emerge -p ../etc/sudoers While it's not really much of an issue, I don't see why it shouldn't work.
This is fixed in git: http://git.overlays.gentoo.org/gitweb/?p=proj/portage.git;a=commit;h=ea5de5801644502ec225e6cf3172af1918cc3554
This is fixed in 2.1.9.39 and 2.2.0_alpha23.