FAQ: How do I ...?

• Use ccache
• Unmask a Package
• Sync from CVS
• Sync from a Gentoo tree snapshot
• Recover VDB
• Remove Portage from my Gentoo installation
• Update Configuration Files (etc-update)
• Sync while doing anything else

Use ccache

To enable ccache, simply set the relevant variables in your configuration bashrc:

PATH="/usr/lib/ccache/bin/:${PATH}"
CCACHE_DIR="/var/tmp/ccache"
SANDBOX_WRITE="${SANDBOX_WRITE}:${CCACHE_DIR}"

You'll need to make sure that your ccache directory has appropriate permissions. Paludis will sometimes use the paludisbuild user when compiling. You can set the maxium size of the cache by running (for example) CCACHE_DIR="/var/tmp/ccache" ccache -M 2G once as root.

Unmask a Package

First, you need to determine how a package is masked. The easiest way to do this is to use cave show. Then, if you're sure you really want to unmask a package, and bearing in mind that doing so might break your system, you need to override the mask. How to do this depends upon the mask reasons:

keyword

You need to add an entry to your keywords.conf accepting one of the ebuild's keywords. The special -* keyword cannot be accepted this way; if an ebuild only has this in its keywords, report it to Gentoo bug 160519 and work around it by using *. An asterisk will also accept an ebuild with empty keywords.

user mask

Either remove your package_mask.conf entry or override it with package_unmask.conf.

profile mask

Override with package_unmask.conf.

repository mask

Override with package_unmask.conf.

eapi

You cannot override this mask. It indicates either a broken ebuild (if EAPI=unknown) or an ebuild not supported by your current version of Paludis.

license

Accept the appropriate licences in licenses.conf.

Sync from CVS

Syncing from CVS requires use of either the cvs+pserver or the cvs+ssh protocol. The syntax for the configuration file line is sync = cvs+ssh://username@host:/path/to/cvsroot:modulename. As an example, for syncing with the gentoo repository via CVS, you would use sync = cvs+ssh://username@cvs.gentoo.org:/var/cvsroot:gentoo-x86.

Sync from a Gentoo tree snapshot

Syncing from a tarball requires the tar+http or tar+ftp protocol. You must also specify sync_options = --strip-components=1, as the Gentoo snapshots place everything under a subdirectory named portage. For example:

# Replace this with your favourite Gentoo mirror
sync = tar+ftp://my.favourite.mirror/gentoo/snapshots/portage-latest.tar.bz2
sync_options = --strip-components=1

Recover VDB

If you deleted /var/db/pkg by accident, you're pretty much screwed. So don't do that, and be more careful next time.

If you deleted /var/db/pkg on purpose, please install OS X and stop pestering us.

Remove Portage from my Gentoo installation

The short answer is that you can't.

Several Gentoo packages wrongly depend on Portage, several depend on Portage because they use it and there really is no reason to try. Just leave Portage installed.

Update Configuration Files (etc-update)

Paludis doesn't provide its own version of etc-update. You can just keep using etc-update or dispatch-conf, since you can't remove Portage. Or, you can use one of the workalikes that are available in the tree, such as app-portage/conf-update, or app-portage/cfg-update.

Sync while doing anything else

If you think this'll work, buy a mac.