Zac Medico

In portage-2.2.0_alpha there’s experimental support for EAPI 4_pre1. Please feel free to test it in your local overlays, and file bugs if you find any issues (bug 273620 tracks EAPI 4 support).

What’s new in sys-apps/portage-2.1.9? Here is the portage-2.1.9 section of the release notes:

• The emerge “world” set now includes separate “selected” and “system” sets, where the “selected” set includes packages listed in /var/lib/portage/world.
• Package set names in emerge arguments have to be prefixed with @ (exceptions: ‘world’ and ‘system’ can be used without the prefix).
• Configuration files now support atoms with wildcards inside the category and package name parts of the atoms. See the portage(5) man page for details.
• The functionality of the autounmask program is emulated by the new emerge –autounmask option, which outputs required configuration changes for package.accept_keywords and package.use.
• The new emerge –exclude option allows packages to be excluded from the dependency resolution. Doing so might result in a fatal error. See the emerge(1) man page for details.
• Per-package environment variables can be set with the new package.env configuration file in /etc/portage/. See the portage(5) man page for details.
• Support for per-package bashrc files in /etc/portage/env. See the portage(5) man page for details.
• The package.keywords configuration file in /etc/portage/ is now deprecated. Instead use the package.accept_keywords file which has the same format and behavior. See the portage(5) man page for details.
• FEATURES=”fixlafiles” (enabled by default): Rewrites newly installed .la files in the same way dev-util/lafilefixer does. Note that this won’t fix your installed .la files.

In portage-2.1.8 there’s a new emerge –rebuilt-binaries option that is very useful for people who build binary packages and install them on multiple computers (using PORTAGE_BINHOST or shared PKGDIR). The option causes packages to be automatically reinstalled in cases when rebuilt binary packages are available (due to revdep-rebuild or similar cases). Rebuilds are detected by comparison of BUILD_TIME package metadata. This option is enabled automatically when using binary packages (–usepkgonly or –getbinpkgonly) together with –update and –deep.

In portage-2.1.7.14 and 2.2_rc59 there is support for EAPI 3_pre2, which adds support for installation prefix variables (ED, EPREFIX, and EROOT) and support for unpack of *.xz compressed files. Bug 296700 tracks EAPI 3 support in portage, and bug 273620 is for the EAPI 4 stuff that used to be in EAPI 3 but got delayed.

Since portage-2.2_rc29 there is support for a metadata/layout.conf file in an overlay which is used to specify names of repositories which satisfy dependencies on eclasses and/or ebuilds. See the QA Overlay Layout support thread on the gentoo-dev mailing list for information about why this is necessary, and refer to the portage(5) man page for details about the layout.conf format

If you want overlay eclasses to override eclasses from other repos then you’ll want to refer to the portage(5) man page for information about the /etc/portage/repos.conf file which can be used to specify site-specific repository configuration information. Note that configuration settings which are specified in repos.conf do not apply to tools such as repoman(1) and egencache(1), since operations performed by these tools are inherently not site-specific.

Since portage-2.2_rc31, repos.conf can be used to create repository aliases, in case you want to substitute one repo for another one that is specified in layout.conf. This is especially useful for funtoo users, who may want something like this in /etc/portage/repos.conf:

[funtoo]
aliases = gentoo

In portage-2.1.6.7, emerge output for unresolved blockers now includes information about how conflicting packages got pulled into the dependency graph. This information helps users understand the reason why a particular blocker hasn’t been resolved automatically. Here is some sample output from bug 234907:

Calculating dependencies... done!
[ebuild  N    ] sys-libs/e2fsprogs-libs-1.41.3-r1  USE="nls"
[ebuild     U ] sys-fs/e2fsprogs-1.41.3 [1.40.9]
[blocks b     ] <sys-fs/e2fsprogs-1.41 ("<sys-fs/e2fsprogs-1.41" is blocking sys-libs/e2fsprogs-libs-1.41.3-r1)
[blocks B     ] sys-libs/com_err ("sys-libs/com_err" is blocking sys-libs/e2fsprogs-libs-1.41.3-r1)
[blocks B     ] sys-libs/ss ("sys-libs/ss" is blocking sys-libs/e2fsprogs-libs-1.41.3-r1)
[blocks B     ] sys-libs/e2fsprogs-libs ("sys-libs/e2fsprogs-libs" is blocking sys-libs/com_err-1.40.9, sys-libs/ss-1.40.9)

 * Error: The above package list contains packages which cannot be
 * installed at the same time on the same system.

  ('installed', '/', 'sys-libs/com_err-1.40.9', 'nomerge') pulled in by
    ~sys-libs/com_err-1.40.9 required by ('installed', '/', 'sys-libs/ss-1.40.9', 'nomerge')

  ('installed', '/', 'sys-libs/ss-1.40.9', 'nomerge') pulled in by
    sys-libs/ss required by world

  ('ebuild', '/', 'sys-libs/e2fsprogs-libs-1.41.3-r1', 'merge') pulled in by
    >=sys-libs/e2fsprogs-libs-1.41 required by ('installed', '/', 'sys-apps/util-linux-2.14.1', 'nomerge')
    ~sys-libs/e2fsprogs-libs-1.41.3 required by ('ebuild', '/', 'sys-fs/e2fsprogs-1.41.3', 'merge')

The above output shows that the sys-libs/ss package got pulled into the dependency graph by the world set. This package is obsolete, so the user should remove it from /var/lib/portage/world. In the future, I plan to add support for emerge to ask the user if they’d like to have the obsolete package automatically removed from the world file (bug 257009).

I’ve implemented new @live-rebuild and @module-rebuild package sets, and added them to the default sets.conf file for the next sys-apps/portage release (that will be 2.2_rc6). Here are the relevant sections from sets.conf:

# Installed ebuilds that inherit from known live eclasses.
[live-rebuild]
class = portage.sets.dbapi.InheritSet
world-candidate = False
inherits = cvs darcs git mercurial subversion

# Installed packages that own files inside /lib/modules.
[module-rebuild]
class = portage.sets.dbapi.OwnerSet
world-candidate = False
files = /lib/modules

Given the new InheritSet and OwnerSet classes, it’s easy to define similar sets based on inherited eclasses and installed files, respectively.

Version 2.2_rc5 of sys-apps/portage adds support for EAPI=”2_pre1″ which has some changes in conditional USE dependency syntax. The previous experimental EAPI=”2_pre0″ value is no longer supported.

For more information about experimental EAPI features, refer to bug #233213 and also see the “Ebuild” chapter of the html documentation that is installed with portage when USE=doc is enabled. I’ve posted a copy of the EAPI=”2_pre1″ documentation here:

EAPI 2_pre1

  Helpers

    doman

      Language codes in file names are now used for path translation.

      Table 6.1. Man Page Path Translation

        Source        Destination
        foo.1         /usr/share/man/man1/foo.1
        foo.lang.1    /usr/share/man/lang/man1/foo.1

  USE Dependencies

    Unconditional USE Dependencies

      Table 6.2. Syntax Examples

        Example          Meaning
        foo[bar]         foo must have bar enabled
        foo[bar,baz]     foo must have both bar and baz enabled
        foo[-bar,baz]    foo must have bar disabled and baz enabled

    Conditional USE Dependencies

      Table 6.3. Syntax Examples

        Compact Form    Equivalent Expanded Form
        foo[bar?]       bar? ( foo[bar]  ) !bar? ( foo       )
        foo[!bar?]      bar? ( foo       ) !bar? ( foo[-bar] )
        foo[bar=]       bar? ( foo[bar]  ) !bar? ( foo[-bar] )
        foo[!bar=]      bar? ( foo[-bar] ) !bar? ( foo[bar]  )

In >=portage-2.2_rc2 there are a few new emerge options that many Gentoo users will probably be interested in:

--jobs JOBS
	Specifies the number of packages to build simultaneously.
	Also see the related --load-average option.

--keep-going
	Continue as much as possible after an error. When an error
	occurs, dependencies are recalculated for remaining packages
	and any with unsatisfied dependencies are automatically
	dropped. Also see the related --skipfirst option.

--load-average LOAD
	Specifies that no new builds should be started if there are
	other builds running and the load average is at least LOAD (a
	floating-point number). This option is recommended for use in
	combination with --jobs in order to avoid excess load. See
	make(1) for information about analogous options that should
	be configured via MAKEOPTS in make.conf(5).

Here is some sample parallel build output from a catalyst stage2 build, with emerge’s new –jobs option enabled:

>>> Building (1 of 10) sys-devel/gettext-0.17 for /
>>> Building (2 of 10) sys-libs/zlib-1.2.3-r1 for /
>>> Building (3 of 10) virtual/libintl-0 for /
>>> Building (4 of 10) dev-util/unifdef-1.20 for /
>>> Installing virtual/libintl-0 to /
>>> Installing dev-util/unifdef-1.20 to /
>>> Building (5 of 10) sys-kernel/linux-headers-2.6.23-r3 for /
>>> Installing sys-libs/zlib-1.2.3-r1 to /
>>> Jobs: 3 of 10 complete, 2 running               Load avg: 3.44, 1.46, 0.69