Bug 543598 – sys-apps/portage: environment overrides disregarded for build deps when using $ROOT

• Product: Portage Development
• Status: RESOLVED CANTFIX

[Description Malte Starostik 2015-03-17 11:41:21 UTC]

Working on a system install script I noticed some irregularities during an emerge --root=... run.
The script exports a bunch of environment variables to selectively override things like MAKEOPTS, FEATURES, and PORTAGE_ELOG_SYSTEM.  Only because of the latter (PORTAGE_ELOG_SYSTEM is otherwise configured in /etc/portage to send mail and set to empty in the script), the following - to me - unexpected behaviour showed: All those overrides work fine for packages merged to $ROOT, but they are ignored for the build dependencies merged to /.  Now if this is intended behaviour, at least I couldn't find this documented anywhere - and it does come as a surprise.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
Boils down to (as a simple test case):
# mkdir /tmp/demo
# tar -C /tmp/demo/ -xf /mnt/master/stages/amd64/stage3-amd64-nomultilib-20150312.tar.bz2 
# mkdir -p /tmp/demo/usr/portage
# mount --bind $(portageq get_repo_path / gentoo) /tmp/demo/usr/portage/
# cat > /tmp/demo/etc/portage/make.conf <<'EOT'
USE=python
EOT
# FEATURES=test chroot /tmp/demo/ emerge -pv1 cracklib
# FEATURES=test chroot /tmp/demo/ emerge -pv1 --root=/sysroot cracklib
# umount /tmp/demo/usr/portage/
# rm -r /tmp/demo
Actual Results:  
Notice how the effective FEATRUES setting for dev-python/setuptools differs between the two emerge calls.  sys-libs/cracklib picks up the env var in any case, its build only dependency setuptools only does so without --root

Expected Results:  
IMHO emerge should honour its environment no matter whether merging to / or some $ROOT.  OR disregard them consistently for both build and runtime dependencies.

FEATURES=test was chosen purely as a simple and pretty visible example, as mentioned above I noticed this to affect PORTAGE_ELOG_SYSTEM just as well, and according to some tests it seems to affect just about anything including USE and MAKEOPTS.

emerge --info in a chroot setup as noted above, so basically a stage3 with only make.conf tweaked as per above.
Portage 2.2.14 (python 2.7.9-final-0, default/linux/amd64/13.0/no-multilib, gcc-4.8.3, glibc-2.19-r1, 3.17.7-gentoo-stellaware x86_64)
=================================================================
System uname: Linux-3.17.7-gentoo-stellaware-x86_64-with-gentoo-2.2
Timestamp of tree: Tue, 17 Mar 2015 10:15:01 +0000
ld GNU ld (Gentoo 2.24 p1.4) 2.24
app-shells/bash:          4.2_p53
dev-lang/perl:            5.20.1-r4
dev-lang/python:          2.7.9-r1, 3.3.5-r1
dev-util/pkgconfig:       0.28-r1
sys-apps/baselayout:      2.2
sys-apps/openrc:          0.13.11
sys-apps/sandbox:         2.6-r1
sys-devel/autoconf:       2.69
sys-devel/automake:       1.13.4
sys-devel/binutils:       2.24-r3
sys-devel/gcc:            4.8.3
sys-devel/gcc-config:     1.7.3
sys-devel/libtool:        2.4.4
sys-devel/make:           4.1-r1
sys-kernel/linux-headers: 3.18 (virtual/os-headers)
sys-libs/glibc:           2.19-r1
Repositories: gentoo
ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="amd64"
ACCEPT_LICENSE="* -@EULA"
CBUILD="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu"
CFLAGS="-O2 -pipe"
CHOST="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu"
CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc"
CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/ca-certificates.conf /etc/env.d /etc/gconf /etc/gentoo-release /etc/sandbox.d /etc/terminfo"
CXXFLAGS="-O2 -pipe"
DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles"
FCFLAGS="-O2 -pipe"
FEATURES="assume-digests binpkg-logs config-protect-if-modified distlocks ebuild-locks fixlafiles merge-sync news parallel-fetch preserve-libs protect-owned sandbox sfperms strict unknown-features-warn unmerge-logs unmerge-orphans userfetch userpriv usersandbox usersync"
FFLAGS="-O2 -pipe"
GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://distfiles.gentoo.org"
LANG="de_DE.utf8"
LDFLAGS="-Wl,-O1 -Wl,--as-needed"
PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages"
PORTAGE_CONFIGROOT="/"
PORTAGE_RSYNC_OPTS="--recursive --links --safe-links --perms --times --omit-dir-times --compress --force --whole-file --delete --stats --human-readable --timeout=180 --exclude=/distfiles --exclude=/local --exclude=/packages"
PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp"
PORTDIR="/usr/portage"
PORTDIR_OVERLAY=""
USE="acl amd64 berkdb bzip2 cli cracklib crypt cxx dri fortran gdbm iconv ipv6 libav mmx modules ncurses nls nptl openmp pam pcre python readline session sse sse2 ssl tcpd unicode zlib" ABI_X86="64" ALSA_CARDS="ali5451 als4000 atiixp atiixp-modem bt87x ca0106 cmipci emu10k1x ens1370 ens1371 es1938 es1968 fm801 hda-intel intel8x0 intel8x0m maestro3 trident usb-audio via82xx via82xx-modem ymfpci" APACHE2_MODULES="authn_core authz_core socache_shmcb unixd actions alias auth_basic authn_alias authn_anon authn_dbm authn_default authn_file authz_dbm authz_default authz_groupfile authz_host authz_owner authz_user autoindex cache cgi cgid dav dav_fs dav_lock deflate dir disk_cache env expires ext_filter file_cache filter headers include info log_config logio mem_cache mime mime_magic negotiation rewrite setenvif speling status unique_id userdir usertrack vhost_alias" CALLIGRA_FEATURES="kexi words flow plan sheets stage tables krita karbon braindump author" CAMERAS="ptp2" COLLECTD_PLUGINS="df interface irq load memory rrdtool swap syslog" CPU_FLAGS_X86="mmx sse sse2" ELIBC="glibc" GPSD_PROTOCOLS="ashtech aivdm earthmate evermore fv18 garmin garmintxt gpsclock itrax mtk3301 nmea ntrip navcom oceanserver oldstyle oncore rtcm104v2 rtcm104v3 sirf superstar2 timing tsip tripmate tnt ublox ubx" INPUT_DEVICES="keyboard mouse evdev" KERNEL="linux" LCD_DEVICES="bayrad cfontz cfontz633 glk hd44780 lb216 lcdm001 mtxorb ncurses text" LIBREOFFICE_EXTENSIONS="presenter-console presenter-minimizer" OFFICE_IMPLEMENTATION="libreoffice" PHP_TARGETS="php5-5" PYTHON_SINGLE_TARGET="python2_7" PYTHON_TARGETS="python2_7 python3_3" RUBY_TARGETS="ruby19 ruby20" USERLAND="GNU" VIDEO_CARDS="fbdev glint intel mach64 mga nouveau nv r128 radeon savage sis tdfx trident vesa via vmware dummy v4l" XTABLES_ADDONS="quota2 psd pknock lscan length2 ipv4options ipset ipp2p iface geoip fuzzy condition tee tarpit sysrq steal rawnat logmark ipmark dhcpmac delude chaos account"
Unset:  CPPFLAGS, CTARGET, EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS, INSTALL_MASK, LC_ALL, MAKEOPTS, PORTAGE_BUNZIP2_COMMAND, PORTAGE_COMPRESS, PORTAGE_COMPRESS_FLAGS, PORTAGE_RSYNC_EXTRA_OPTS, SYNC, USE_PYTHON

[Comment 1 Zac Medico 2015-03-17 17:18:25 UTC]

(In reply to Malte Starostik from comment #0)
> Working on a system install script I noticed some irregularities during an
> emerge --root=... run.
> The script exports a bunch of environment variables to selectively override
> things like MAKEOPTS, FEATURES, and PORTAGE_ELOG_SYSTEM.  Only because of
> the latter (PORTAGE_ELOG_SYSTEM is otherwise configured in /etc/portage to
> send mail and set to empty in the script), the following - to me -
> unexpected behaviour showed: All those overrides work fine for packages
> merged to $ROOT, but they are ignored for the build dependencies merged to
> /.  Now if this is intended behaviour, at least I couldn't find this
> documented anywhere - and it does come as a surprise.

Yes, it's intentional, because it's possible that some of the variables that are set for ROOT=/foo could be damaging for ROOT=/ (think CHOST, etc...). This applies especially when cross-compiling.

[Comment 2 Zac Medico 2015-03-17 17:27:02 UTC]

There is a whitelist of variables that's allowed to pass through. For example:

http://gitweb.gentoo.org/proj/portage.git/commit/?id=9cd988b0dc45ac87b3dd37203755a89f4752514f