Re: [gentoo-user] Re: emerge --sync vs emerge -sync

[Michael A. Smith]

Charles Marcus wrote:
> Richard Fish wrote:
>
>> On 1/18/06, Charles Marcus <cmarcus@×××××××××××××.com> wrote:
>>
>>> This may be the ultimate dumb question, but no amount of googling could
>>> satisfy my ignorance...
>>>
>>> Is there any difference? If not, why are the double hyphens almost
>>> always specified?
>>
>>
>> -- is the GNU getopt syntax for long options.  For normal GNU programs:
>>
>> --opt is processed as a single option ("opt")
>> -opt is processed as 6 options ('o', 'p', and 't').
>>
>> --sync is correct.  -sync is wrong and generates an error.
>
>
> Ahem... not for me it didn't... thats why I asked - wondered if I may
> have hosed anything (can't imagine that such a minor, easy-to-make typo
> would caus ebad things to happen, though).
>
> Thanks for the detailed explanation, though... now I at least know the
> differences.
>
> Now, why did it not generate an error for me, I wonder?

Maybe you're thinking of emerge sync:
$ emerge -sync
!!! Error: -y is an invalid short action or option.
dell src # emerge sync
 >>> starting rsync with rsync://129.21.154.146/gentoo-portage...

emerge sync does the same thing as emerge --sync, but actually it's a 
bad habit to get into, because the default behavior for portage is to 
install its non-flag arguments. The implication is that 'emerge sync' 
should install a package named 'sync'.

Of course, that doesn't happen. emerge (sync|info|metadata|...) all 
don't install packages. If you want to install app-vim/info,  you 
have to fully specify its name: emerge app-vim/info.

But you can never tell when such behavior will change. :-)
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