[Nottingham] Gentoo experts: emerge file collisions!?

[Richard Ward]

On Thu, 2009-11-12 at 15:23 +0000, Martin wrote:

> >>> COLLISION_IGNORE="/" emerge glibc
> 
> Is there some special functionality for missing out the ";" to make bash
> treat that as the two instructions:
> 
> COLLISION_IGNORE="/"
> emerge glibc
> 
> ?

Its actually treating it more like three instructions:
COLLISION_IGNORE="/"
export COLLISION_IGNORE
emerge glibc

except that the environment variable COLLISION is only set for the
invoked process, rather than for the shell (as export does). From `man
bash', in the ENVIRONMENT section:
 
"The environment for any simple command or  function  may  be  augmented
temporarily  by  prefixing  it with parameter assignments, as described
above in PARAMETERS.  These assignment statements affect only the
environment seen by that command."

> > I actually used:
> > COLLISION_IGNORE="/" ; emerge glibc

This would not have the desired effect at all, as glibc would never have
access to the COLLISION_IGNORE value that you set. Unless it comes just
before a command, FOO="BAR" just sets a local variable to use in bash -
nice for scripting. It needs to be exported (export FOO) before it
becomes an environment variable.

> All then updated nicely.

Glad you got it working in the end then.