Category: Gentoo

Optimizing ccache using per-package caches

ccache can be of great assistance to Gentoo developers and users who frequently end up rebuilding similar versions of packages. By providing a caching compiler frontend, it can speed up builds by removing the need to build files that have not changed again. However, it uses a single common cache directory by default which can be suboptimal even if you are explicitly enabling ccache only for a subset of packages needing that.

The likeliness of cross-package ccache hits is pretty low — majority of the hits occurs within a single package. If you use a single cache directory for all affected packages, it grows pretty quick. Besides a possible performance hit from having a lot of files in every directory, this means that packages built later can shift earlier packages out of the cache, resulting in meaninglessly lost cache hits. A simple way to avoid both of the problems is to use separate ccache directories.

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GLEP 73 check results explained

The pkgcheck instance run for the Repo mirror&CI project has finished gaining a full support for GLEP 73 REQUIRED_USE validation and verification today. As a result, it can report 5 new issues defined by that GLEP. In this article, I’d like to shortly summarize them and explain how to interpret and solve the reports.

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Why you can’t rely on repository format (PMS)

You should know already that you are not supposed to rely on Portage internals in ebuilds — all variables, functions and helpers that are not defined by the PMS. You probably know that you are not supposed to touch various configuration files, vdb and other Portage files as well. What most people don’t seem to understand, you are not supposed to make any assumptions about the ebuild repository either. In this post, I will expand on this and try to explain why.

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Dependency classes and allowed dependency types

In my previous post I have described a number of pitfalls regarding Gentoo dependency specifications. However, I have missed a minor point of correctness of various dependency types in specific dependency classes. I am going to address this in this short post.

There are three classes of dependencies in Gentoo: build-time dependencies that are installed before the source build happens, runtime dependencies that should be installed before the package is installed to the live system and ‘post’ dependencies which are pretty much runtime dependencies whose install can be delayed if necessary to avoid dependency loops. Now, there are some fun relationships between dependency classes and dependency types.

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Dependency pitfalls regarding slots, slot ops and any-of deps

During my work on Gentoo, I have seen many types of dependency pitfalls that developers fell in. Sad to say, their number is increasing with new EAPI features — we are constantly increasing new ways into failures rather than working on simplifying things. I can’t say the learning curve is getting much steeper but it is considerably easier to make a mistake.

In this article, I would like to point out a few common misunderstandings and pitfalls regarding slots, slot operators and any-of (|| ()) deps. All of those constructs are used to express dependencies that can be usually be satisfied by multiple packages or package versions that can be installed in parallel, and missing this point is often the cause of trouble.

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