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This document is a WORK IN PROGRESS.
This is just a quick personal cheat sheet: treat its contents with caution!

Overlays

An overlay is an ebuild repository, i.e. a repository containing packages you might want to install and use. With Portage, the main Gentoo overlay is installed by default (you can find the config file of this overlay here: /etc/portage/repos.conf/gentoo.conf).

By default, the overlays configuration files is located here: /etc/portage/repos.conf.

But alternative overlays also exist and can be used:

  • They are registered repositories, which are "known and more trusted" by the community. You can find them here:

  • They are unregistered repositories, which are not officially listed by the Gentoo Overlays project members. Note that if you want to add an overlay to the registered ones, you can follow this guide.

Reference(s)

Table of contents

eselect repositories

eselect-repository is an eselect module for manipulating /etc/portage/repos.conf entries (i.e. ebuild repositories/overlays).

This utility supersedes layman for listing, configuring, and handling synchronization of alternate repositories (except for version control systems which the package manager does not natively sync, e.g. darcs and g-sorcery in Portage).

  • Install: 

    # emerge -a app-eselect/eselect-repository

  • List available repositories (note that added/enabled repositories are marked with *, and that the ones installed without eselect-repository are marked with #). 

    $ eselect repository list

  • Add/enable a registered repository: 

    $ eselect repository enable repo-name

  • Sync added repository 

    # emaint sync -r repo-name

  • Example installing monero: 

    # eselect repository enable monero
# emaint sync -r monero
# echo '*/*::monero ~amd64' >> /etc/portage/package.accept_keywords
# emerge -a net-p2p/monero

  • Add/enable an unregistered repository: 

    # eselect repository add unregistered-repo-name git https://github.com/test/unregistered-repo-name.git

  • Disable a registered repository without removing its contents: 

    # eselect repository disable registered-repo-name

  • Disable an unregistered repository without removing its contents: 

    # eselect repository disable -f unregistered-repo-name

  • Disable a registered repository and remove its contents: 

    # eselect repository remove registered-repo-name

  • Disable an unregistered repository and remove its contents: 

    # eselect repository remove -f unregistered-repo-name

  • Create a new local repository (the create sub-command will make an ebuild repository skeleton): 

    # eselect repository create /path/to/local-repo

eix

If you want to search across all registered overlays (and not only the installed ones) you can use eix with the -R option, see eix.

Note that you can also this web interface to do so: https://gpo.zugaina.org/.

Layman

TODO (see https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Layman)

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