Ebuild repository

An ebuild repository, colloquially known as an overlay, is Article description::a structure of directories and files used to add and extend software packages for a Gentoo-based system. Ebuild repositories contain ebuilds, eclasses, and other types of descriptive metadata files. These files inform the package manager of software available for installation, news items, and profile targets. An ebuild repository should conform to one or more Ebuild APIs as detailed in Gentoo's Package Manager Specification.

The Gentoo ebuild repository, as Gentoo's primary and "official" repository, is the source for all the information needed to build and install Gentoo packages, contained in ebuilds.

Administrators of Gentoo systems can add additional ebuild repositories by using various utilities and methods described below.

The Gentoo ebuild repository
The primary repository of any Gentoo system is called the Gentoo ebuild repository. It is hosted and maintained on a Gentoo server, and gets synchronized to local machines, to be available to Portage.

The Gentoo ebuild repository contains ebuilds that enable the building of all packages that can make up an "official" Gentoo installation. Through these ebuilds, the Gentoo repository houses metadata about software available for installation, such as a package's name, version, possible USE flags, license, website etc. Dependency information also resides here, to allow Portage to pull in the packages required to build and run anything that could be installed. Importantly, the ebuilds inside the Gentoo repository contain the information required configure, build (compile), install, and test each package, usually from a project's own source code.

The Gentoo ebuild repository will sometimes be called by shorter, or even colloquial, names, such as the Gentoo repository, the Gentoo repo, ::gentoo, gentoo.git, or occasionally just the "repo". It was historically known within the Gentoo community as the Portage tree, rsync tree, or sometimes just "the tree".

Additionally to the ebuilds that allow building packages, the Gentoo repository contains the official profiles, which define default state of USE flags, default values for most variables found in, the set of system packages, and select available package versions that define what packages are available for a given architecture.

The Gentoo repository is also the place where the news items are provided, which is why any new news items will be highlighted after a Gentoo repository synchronization.

The Gentoo repository, and it's ebuilds, are maintained by the Gentoo developers and members of the community.

Repositories in general
Ebuild repositories consist of a set of files (ebuilds, metadata files, ...) that can be pulled in from public repositories (through git, CVS, SVN, etc.) or downloaded as tarballs and extracted manually onto the system.

Repositories are handled through (which, like many other Portage configuration locations, can be a file or a directory), and the Eselect/Repository is is a tool to manage this configuration.

Repository definitions inside also inform Portage if and how the repository can be updated. With it, calling will automatically update the enabled repositories as well.

A deprecated, yet still supported method is to use the PORTDIR_OVERLAY variable inside. This variable can point to one or more additional locations on the file system where additional repositories are available. The use of the directory is highly preferred.

For more information, see /etc/portage/repos.conf and the Portage/Sync article.

Priorities
Each ebuild repository has a unique priority to the package manager. This ensures that in the case of a specific version being found in several ebuild repositories, the resolution is unambiguous. Ebuilds from repositories with higher priority numbers (for example ) will take precedence over ebuilds from repositories with lower priorities (such as  ).

The list of ebuild repositories with their priorities can be obtained through the output of the following commands (look for the "Repositories" string):

The Gentoo ebuild repository will have a priority of  which means that all other repositories generally take precedence if they are assigned a higher priority. This is the default behaviour, because ebuild repositories are designed to "lay over" or "on top" of the Gentoo repository. To set the priority of other repositories, manually edit the relevant repos.conf section and set priority = to the desired value. For example:

Repositories that do not have a priority set default to 0.

Repository synchronization
Ebuild repositories should be updated, or "synchronized", so that local copies will reflect a recent state of the parent repositories, to be able to keep the system up to date, and install current software. If local repositories are not very up to date, synchronize the repositories and update the system, before installing packages.

Regular synchronization with the Gentoo repository and system updates are important, to ensure that all the latest security updates are installed, and that the local system does not get too out of sync with the Gentoo repository, as this can make upgrades complicated.

Repository synchronization is generally managed with the command. See the Portage sync article, and for information on how to use the portage synchronization commands.

The command is now only a compatibility command, calling the emaint module. is a wrapper using, followed by. For further details see the Eix article and.

The emerge-webrsync tool can be used to download and install the daily Gentoo Repository snapshot. This may help with firewall restrictions.

Repository management
Use the Eselect/Repository tool to manage ebuild repositories registered on repos.gentoo.org, or custom ebuild repositories, automatically through.

Local repositories can alternatively be defined by hand.

Layman can still be used to manage repositories, but it is superseded by for most uses. does support some version control systems which the Portage does not natively sync (e.g. darcs and g-sorcery), and can manage repositories through the legacy method.

Emerging a duplicate package
When working with ebuild repositories it is possible to encounter a situation where multiple versions of the same package are available from different ebuild repositories. Instruct Portage to install a specific package from a specific ebuild repository with the  version specifier:

The same notation can be used for different emerge instructions, including uninstalling a package through.

Cache generation
When large ebuild repositories are installed, Portage may take a long time to perform operations like dependency resolution. This is because ebuild repositories do not usually contain a metadata cache.

Generate a local metadata cache by running after syncing the ebuild repositories:

Be careful, because takes a lot of time and it's not recommended for rsync users as rsync updates the cache using server-side caches (most of users of portage are rsync users). Rsync users should simply run (or ) to regenerate the cache. It's probably only users of very large ebuild repositories should try.

Masking enabled ebuild repositories
When using large ebuild repositories or those with unknown/low quality code, it is best practice to hard mask the whole ebuild repository and only accept specific ebuilds on a case-by-case basis. For example, for an overlay named "repository-foobar":

Then add the specific package(s) from the repository-foobar overlay so that they will be available visible to Portage for installation:

After the above unmask the package named "foo-category/bar" should be available and none of the other packages from the repository-foobar overlay will be available, which is by design.

External resources

 * https://repos.gentoo.org - Gentoo's official ebuild repository hosting location.
 * https://github.com/gentoo/ - GitHub mirror of the Gentoo's ebuild repository.
 * https://gpo.zugaina.org/Overlays - A non-official very useful site for searching overlays.