Bug 390473 – I_KNOW_WHAT_I_AM_DOING is not documented.

• Product: Documentation
• Status: RESOLVED CANTFIX

[Description dE 2011-11-14 03:46:25 UTC]

The variable I_KNOW_WHAT_I_AM_DOING is not documented in any man page, or in that case any Gentoo documentation. I suggest it should be in the emerge or make.conf man page.

[Comment 1 Mike Gilbert 2011-11-14 04:00:54 UTC]

1. I don't think that variable is actually used by sys-apps/portage.
2. Several ebuilds/eclasses reference it, but it is undocumented for a reason.

[Comment 2 Zac Medico 2011-11-14 04:06:06 UTC]

(In reply to comment #1)
> 1. I don't think that variable is actually used by sys-apps/portage.

Yeah, I have no idea what it means.

[Comment 3 Mike Gilbert 2011-11-14 04:11:56 UTC]

Ok, closing this since there is nothing I can do with it.

If you really want to pursue it, you will need to file a separate bug for each ebuild or eclass that makes use of an undocumented I_KNOW_WHAT_I_AM_DOING variable.

[Comment 4 dE 2011-11-15 05:45:44 UTC]

(In reply to comment #1)
> 1. I don't think that variable is actually used by sys-apps/portage.

If I don't set it, libreoffice doesn't compile. It says low on free space, but by the end it compiles fine.

[Comment 5 Mike Gilbert 2011-11-15 05:48:54 UTC]

You should file a bug for libreoffice then.

[Comment 6 dE 2011-11-16 08:19:32 UTC]

This's specific to emerge/portage's design, not only libreoffice - 

http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/gentoo/dev/173149

http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-694284-start-0.html

[Comment 7 Alexandre Rostovtsev (RETIRED) 2011-11-16 16:37:53 UTC]

(In reply to comment #6)
> This's specific to emerge/portage's design, not only libreoffice - 
> 
> http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/gentoo/dev/173149
> 
> http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-694284-start-0.html

I_KNOW_WHAT_I_AM_DOING is not part of any design; it's just that several different developers had for whatever reason settled on using the same variable name for overriding various safety checks in the part of the portage tree that they are responsible for. Arguably, that's not a very good thing. For example, someone who sets I_KNOW_WHAT_I_AM_DOING to override safety checks in openoffice (and potentially crash his system by running out of disk space) might not know what he is doing with respect to dev profiles.