Bug 309699 – man emerge, --emptytree description is misleading.

• Status: RESOLVED FIXED
• Product: Portage Development

[Description Ben Kohler 2010-03-16 05:56:55 UTC]

In my opinion, the --emptytree description in emerge(1) is very misleading-- details below.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.  man emerge
Actual Results:  
       --emptytree (-e)
              Reinstalls all world packages and their dependencies to the cur-
              rent  USE  specifications while differing from the installed set
              of packages as little as possible.  You should run  with  --pre-
              tend first to make sure the result is what you expect.

Expected Results:  
First, --emptytree doesn't imply world.  It rebuilds the target and its entire dep tree, the way I understand it.

Current USE specifications? Does that really need stated?

Differing from the installed set as little as possible?  Does this actually happen, or does it just emerge the target with all of the latest unmasked deps that satisfy it?  I could be off-base on this one.

Something like this seems more appropriate:
  --emptytree
      Rebuilds target and its entire dependency tree, as though no packages are currently installed.  You should run with --pretend first to make sure the result is what you expect.

This is from the current emerge(1) manpage from sys-apps/portage-2.1.8.3

[Comment 1 Zac Medico 2010-03-16 06:18:19 UTC]

Thanks, this is fixed in svn r15831.

[Comment 2 Arfrever Frehtes Taifersar Arahesis (RETIRED) 2010-03-18 16:20:28 UTC]

The fix hasn't been released yet.

[Comment 3 Zac Medico 2010-08-23 06:05:29 UTC]

This is in 2.2_rc68, but I'll leave this bug open until it's in an unmasked version.

[Comment 4 Zac Medico 2010-09-04 08:21:12 UTC]

This is fixed in 2.1.9.