Portage

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Portage - the heart of Gentoo
emerge — configuration — ebuild repository — dispatch-conf

world file — USE flags — ebuilds — profiles
upgrades — using testing packages — binary packages
tools — gentoolkit — eselect
Portage FAQ — cheat sheet — FAQ
all articles
See also
Portage is a very advanced package manager that will treat the user's wishes with the highest respect. Sometimes too much trust in put into the user, so you may be looking for Portage Help rather than this article.

Portage is the official package manager and distribution system for Gentoo. It functions as the heart of Gentoo-based operating systems, providing advanced dependency resolution, flexible building and installation of software from source or from binary packages, and most other core distribution functionality.

Portage will provision software from the Gentoo ebuild repository, any additional ebuild repositories, or binhost. Portage includes many commands for repository and package management, the primary of which is the emerge command.

Some common questions about portage and the emerge command are answered in the FAQ and the Portage FAQ.

Tip
For day to day usage, the emerge, emaint, and dispatch-conf will be the most used Portage commands. Refer to relevant documentation.
See also
See man portage for complete user documentation. See the emerge article for information on installing and maintaining packages with Portage.

This article describes Portage from a user's perspective. Those looking to contribute to Portage development should visit the Portage project page.

Installation

All Gentoo installations come with Portage, so there is no need to install it!.

In the rare eventuality of a corrupt or missing Portage, see the Corrupt or absent Portage section.

Updating Portage

In order for Gentoo to stay up to date, Portage must stay up to date. Generally the usual, regular updating of Gentoo, will automatically update Portage without issue.

On occasion, updates to Portage can make it advisable to update Portage before the rest of the system. After synchronizing Portage, a message requesting this may be displayed: 

* An update to portage is available. It is _highly_ recommended
* that you update portage now, before any other packages are updated.

* To update portage, run 'emerge --oneshot sys-apps/portage' now.

Emerge Portage as advised (adapt the command if the message differs from this example). The --oneshot option is important, to avoid adding sys-apps/portage to the world file:

root #emerge --ask --oneshot sys-apps/portage

If there is an issue with updating Portage, User:Sam/Portage_help/Upgrading_Portage may help.

Configuration

Files

The main Portage configuration is in make.conf, though there are many files used to configure Portage, mainly in the /etc/portage directory.

See man make.conf for comprehensive documentation, notably a list of variables that can be set in this file.

The /usr/share/portage/config/make.globals file contains many default configuration values sourced by Portage. These values can be overwritten by specifying the same variable names in /etc/portage/make.conf.

Environment variables

Portage can be configured to a vast extent through environment variables.

See man make.conf for information on available environment variables. Refer also to the Handbook section for working with environment variables in Gentoo.

To view all presently set environment variables, run:

user $emerge --info --verbose
Tip
Environment variables can be set on a per-package basis via /etc/portage/package.env entries.

Ebuild repositories

In addition to the Gentoo ebuild repository, from which Portage will pull packages by default, additional ebuild repositories are available, for example:

  • repos.gentoo.org - list of repositories contributed by the community, some by Gentoo developers
  • GURU - official ebuild repository maintained collaboratively by Gentoo users, with a little support from a few Gentoo developers
  • gpo.zugaina.org - third-party list of ebuild repositories

The ebuild repository article has a section on configuring ebuild repositories to be used by Portage.

Search for available ebuilds on the command line with emerge --search or eix.

Warning
While the Gentoo ebuild repository is either written or reviewed by Gentoo developers, and the GURU repository has some developer oversight, that is not always the case for other ebuild repositories. It is possible that some ebuilds repositories might contain vulnerable, badly broken or, theoretically, even malicious software.

Binary hosts

Binary hosts are configured in /etc/portage/binrepos.conf and allow fast installation of binary packages, as long as there is a package available for the requested USE flags for the package being installed or updated.

There is an official Gentoo binary host that contains many binary packages for the amd64 and arm64 architectures - see the guide at that link for further setup and usage instructions.

To configure alternative binary hosts, and for more information on using binary packages with Portage, see the binary package guide.

Usage

Portage includes many different tools and utilities to help with system administration and maintenance. The following sections list these in alphabetical order.

Tip
The main commands users will need on a day to day basis are emerge, emaint, and dispatch-conf.

archive-conf

The purpose of archive-conf is to save off a config file in the dispatch-conf archive directory. Most users should not ever need to run this command:

root #archive-conf
Usage: archive-conf /CONFIG/FILE [/CONFIG/FILE...]

dispatch-conf

The dispatch-conf utility is used to manage configuration file updates. See the dispatch-conf article.

ebuild

ebuild is Portage's command for running the various ebuild functions.

This command is generally not run by the user and is useful only to developers. Do not try to use it to install packages, see rather the emerge command.

For disambiguation between this command and ebuild files, see the ebuild article.

egencache

The egencache tool rebuilds the cache of metadata information for the ebuild repositories. See the egencache article for additional information.

emaint

Performs package management related system health checks and maintenance.

See repository synchronization about how to use emaint to synchronize repositories. See man 1 emaint for detailed information.

Note
The emerge --sync command is now implemented with emaint.
user $emaint --help
usage: usage: emaint [options] COMMAND
 
The emaint program provides an interface to system health checks
and maintenance. See the emaint(1) man page for additional
information about the following commands:
 
Commands:
  all            Perform all supported commands
  binhost        Scan and generate metadata indexes for binary packages.
  cleanconfmem   Check and clean the config tracker list for uninstalled packages.
  cleanresume    Discard emerge --resume merge lists
  logs           Check and clean old logs in the PORTAGE_LOGDIR.
  merges         Scan for failed merges and fix them.
  movebin        Perform package move updates for binary packages
  moveinst       Perform package move updates for installed and binary packages.
  sync           Check repos.conf settings and sync repositories.
  world          Check and fix problems in the world file.
 
optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -c, --check           Check for problems (a default option for most modules)
  -f, --fix             Attempt to fix problems (a default option for most modules)
  --version             show program's version number and exit
  -C, --clean           Cleans out logs more than 7 days old (cleanlogs only) module-options: -t, -p
  -t NUM, --time NUM    (cleanlogs only): -t, --time Delete logs older than NUM of days
  -p, --pretend         (cleanlogs only): -p, --pretend Output logs that would be deleted
  -P, --purge           Removes the list of previously failed merges. WARNING: Only use this option if you plan on manually fixing them or do not want them re-installed.
  -y, --yes             (merges submodule only): Do not prompt for emerge invocations
  -r REPO, --repo REPO  (sync module only): -r, --repo Sync the specified repo
  -A, --allrepos        (sync module only): -A, --allrepos Sync all repos that have a sync-url defined
  -a, --auto            (sync module only): -a, --auto Sync auto-sync enabled repos only
  --sync-submodule {glsa,news,profiles}
                        (sync module only): Restrict sync to the specified submodule(s)

emerge

emerge is the command-line interface to Portage and is how most users will interact with Portage.

See the emerge article for more information on the wiki.

emerge-webrsync

Install a Gentoo ebuild repository snapshot from the web. See Handbook.

root #emerge-webrsync -h
Usage: /usr/bin/emerge-webrsync [options]
 
Options:
  --revert=yyyymmdd   Revert to snapshot
  -k, --keep          Keep snapshots in DISTDIR (don't delete)
  -q, --quiet         Only output errors
  -v, --verbose       Enable verbose output
  -x, --debug         Enable debug output
  -h, --help          This help screen (duh!)

emerge-webrsync is called internally by eix-sync when sync-type in /etc/portage/repos.conf is set to webrsync.

emirrordist

Tool for mirroring of package distfiles.

root #emirrordist -h
usage: emirrordist [options] <action>
 
emirrordist - a fetch tool for mirroring of package distfiles
 
optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
 
Actions:
  --version             display portage version and exit
  --mirror              mirror distfiles for the selected repository
 
Common options:
  --dry-run             perform a trial run with no changes made (usually
                        combined with --verbose)
  --verbose, -v         display extra information on stderr (multiple
                        occurences increase verbosity)
  --ignore-default-opts
                        do not use the EMIRRORDIST_DEFAULT_OPTS environment
                        variable
  --distfiles DIR       distfiles directory to use (required)
  --jobs JOBS, -j JOBS  number of concurrent jobs to run
  --load-average LOAD, -l LOAD
                        load average limit for spawning of new concurrent jobs
  --tries TRIES         maximum number of tries per file, 0 means unlimited
                        (default is 10)
  --repo REPO           name of repo to operate on
  --config-root DIR     location of portage config files
  --repositories-configuration REPOSITORIES_CONFIGURATION
                        override configuration of repositories (in format of
                        repos.conf)
  --strict-manifests <y|n>
                        manually override "strict" FEATURES setting
  --failure-log FILE    log file for fetch failures, with tab-delimited
                        output, for reporting purposes
  --success-log FILE    log file for fetch successes, with tab-delimited
                        output, for reporting purposes
  --scheduled-deletion-log FILE
                        log file for scheduled deletions, with tab-delimited
                        output, for reporting purposes
  --delete              enable deletion of unused distfiles
  --deletion-db FILE    database file used to track lifetime of files
                        scheduled for delayed deletion
  --deletion-delay SECONDS
                        delay time for deletion, measured in seconds
  --temp-dir DIR        temporary directory for downloads
  --mirror-overrides FILE
                        file holding a list of mirror overrides
  --mirror-skip MIRROR_SKIP
                        comma delimited list of mirror targets to skip when
                        fetching
  --restrict-mirror-exemptions RESTRICT_MIRROR_EXEMPTIONS
                        comma delimited list of mirror targets for which to
                        ignore RESTRICT="mirror"
  --verify-existing-digest
                        use digest as a verification of whether existing
                        distfiles are valid
  --distfiles-local DIR
                        distfiles-local directory to use
  --distfiles-db FILE   database file used to track which ebuilds a distfile
                        belongs to
  --recycle-dir DIR     directory for extended retention of files that are
                        removed from distdir with the --delete option
  --recycle-db FILE     database file used to track lifetime of files in
                        recycle dir
  --recycle-deletion-delay SECONDS
                        delay time for deletion of unused files from recycle
                        dir, measured in seconds (defaults to the equivalent
                        of 60 days)
  --fetch-log-dir DIR   directory for individual fetch logs
  --whitelist-from FILE
                        specifies a file containing a list of files to
                        whitelist, one per line, # prefixed lines ignored

See also man emirrordist.

env-update

Updates environment settings automatically.

root #env-update -h
Usage: env-update [--no-ldconfig]
 
See the env-update(1) man page for more info

See also man env-update. See the login article for some information on how the environment is set up in Gentoo.

fixpackages

Perform package move updates for all packages.

root #fixpackages -h
usage: fixpackages [-h]
 
The fixpackages program performs package move updates on configuration files,
installed packages, and binary packages.
 
optional arguments:
  -h, --help  show this help message and exit

See also man fixpackages.

regenworld

Regenerates the world file by checking the Portage logfile for all actions that have been done in the past.

Warning
Make a backup of existing world file (/var/lib/portage/world) before using this tool.
root #regenworld -h
This script regenerates the portage world file by checking the portage
logfile for all actions that you've done in the past. It ignores any
arguments except --help. It is recommended that you make a backup of
your existing world file (/var/lib/portage/world) before using this tool.

portageq

For details see portageq.

quickpkg

Creates Portage packages - see the Binary package guide for more information.

user $quickpkg --help
usage: quickpkg [options] <list of package atoms or package sets>
 
optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  --umask UMASK         umask used during package creation (default is 0077)
  --ignore-default-opts
                        do not use the QUICKPKG_DEFAULT_OPTS environment variable
  --include-config <y|n>
                        include all files protected by CONFIG_PROTECT (as a security precaution, default is 'n')
  --include-unmodified-config <y|n>
                        include files protected by CONFIG_PROTECT that have not been modified since installation (as a
                        security precaution, default is 'n')

See also man quickpkg.

repoman

The information in this section has been deprecated. It may or may not be relevant for contemporary usage. Handle with care!

repoman is a development tool used for testing ebuilds. Since version 2.3.0, it is packaged separately from Portage, in app-portage/repoman. See the repoman article for additional information.

It is now deprecated in favor of tools provided by the dev-util/pkgcheck and dev-util/pkgdev packages.

glsa-check

Gentoo Linux Security Announcements, or GLSAs, are notifications sent out to the community to inform of security vulnerabilities related broadly to Gentoo Linux or specifically to packages contained in the ::gentoo ebuild repository.

glsa-check is a tool to keep track of the various GLSAs. It can be used to view GLSAs, but more importantly to test if the system is vulnerable to known GLSAs.

See man glsa-check and glsa-check --help for more information:

user $glsa-check --help
usage: glsa-check <option> [glsa-id | all | new | affected]
 
optional arguments:
  -h, --help        show this help message and exit
  -V, --version     Show information about glsa-check
  -q, --quiet       Be less verbose and do not send empty mail
  -v, --verbose     Print more messages
  -n, --nocolor     Removes color from output
  -e, --emergelike  Upgrade to latest version (not least-change)
  -c, --cve         Show CVE IDs in listing mode
  -r, --reverse     List GLSAs in reverse order
 
Modes:
  -l, --list        List a summary for the given GLSA(s) or set and whether they affect the system
  -d, --dump        Show all information about the GLSA(s) or set
  --print           Alias for --dump
  -t, --test        Test if this system is affected by the GLSA(s) or set and output the GLSA ID(s)
  -p, --pretend     Show the necessary steps to remediate the system
  -f, --fix         (experimental) Attempt to remediate the system based on the instructions given in the GLSA(s) or set. This will only upgrade (when an upgrade path exists) or remove packages
  -i, --inject      Inject the given GLSA(s) into the glsa_injected file
  -m, --mail        Send a mail with the given GLSAs to the administrator
 
glsa-list can contain an arbitrary number of GLSA ids, filenames containing GLSAs or the special identifiers 'all' and 'affected'

Tips

Common portage issues and resolutions

Gentoo has many more configuration options than most distributions allow. This leads to some confusing at first terminology, such as blockers, Circular dependencies, REQUIRED_USE and some others.

The articles linked below, will help a user understand how they come about and how to resolve them.

Portage/Help

Main (Gentoo) ebuild repository sync time

To see when the Gentoo ebuild repository was last updated (synced), run the following command:

user $cat /var/db/repos/gentoo/metadata/timestamp.chk

Listing package sets

Need to determine what packages are inside each set? See Package sets.

Troubleshooting

Corrupt or absent Portage

Although it should be very rare, as with all data, there remains a possibility that Portage could become corrupt or even uninstalled, which would be very bad for the functioning of the whole system. If ever this were to occur, there are ways Portage can be recovered, however, because Portage is so central, re-installation is a rather involved operation, requiring manual intervention to, in effect, install a package manager without having a functioning package manager.

See Fix my Gentoo for details on emergency installation via binary packages. See also Fixing broken Portage.

Default Gentoo ebuild repository location change

As of portage v2.3.66[1], which was released on 2019-04-29[2], the default locations changed for the portdir, distdir, repo_name, repo_basedir directories.

For more information see bug bug #662982.

Old location

CODE Location before 2019-04-29
repo_basedir="/usr"
repo_name="portage"
distdir="/usr/portage/distfiles"
portdir="/usr/portage"
target_distdir="/usr/portage/distfiles"
target_pkgdir="/usr/portage/packages"

New location

CODE Location as of 2019-04-29 and later
repo_basedir="/var/db/repos"
repo_name="gentoo"
distdir="/var/cache/distfiles"
portdir="/var/db/repos/gentoo"
target_distdir="/var/cache/distfiles"
target_pkgdir="/var/cache/binpkgs"

See also

  • /etc/portage — the primary configuration directory for Portage, Gentoo's package manager.
  • /etc/portage/make.conf — the main configuration file used to customize the Portage environment on a global level., the location Portage keeps binary packages.
  • /etc/portage/color.map — a file containing variables that define color classes used by Portage.
  • prefix — enables the power of Gentoo and Portage on other distributions and/or operating systems (Microsoft Windows via Cygwin, Android via Termux, etc.).

Related to Portage

Portage in the Gentoo AMD64 Handbook

Portage tools

Alternate package managers and GUIs

  • Pkgcore — an alternative package manager for Gentoo that aims for high performance, extensibility, and a clean design.
  • app-portage/kuroo - Graphical Portage frontend based on KF5/Qt5.
  • App Swipe - Qt GUI for browsing local Portage repositories.

Ebuild or package related

  • Package sets — describes package sets in high detail and includes a list of all typically available sets on a Gentoo system.

External resources

Portage man pages

The man pages contain complete technical documentation for Portage. Type man <subject> in a shell on a Gentoo system to read the local man page. Note that man pages have a see also section for further information.

  1. ↑ https://gitweb.gentoo.org/proj/catalyst.git/commit/?id=91eb3317ee581f7d1eeacc68ebe88de5a1cdfd1a
  2. ↑ https://gitweb.gentoo.org/proj/portage.git/tag/?h=portage-2.3.66
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