Eselect

 is Article description::a tool for administration and configuration on Gentoo systems. It will modify the system's behavior and should be used with care by the system administrator. eselect is a modular framework for writing configuration utilities. It consists of:


 * A main program named (found in ).
 * Various modules ( files) which carry out different tasks.
 * Several libraries which help to ensure consistent behavior and simplify the creation of new modules.

A module provides several actions. Actions typically either display some information ( and actions are common) or update the system somehow (for example,  and ). Each module also provides and  actions which explain how to use the module.

To list all modules, run without any arguments.

See also the eselect user guide.

Installation
Deployments of Gentoo Linux should already have installed, as the  package is part of the system set.

After USE flag changes
After changing USE flags just for the eselect package, rebuild eselect for the new flags to be applied. As eselect is in the system set,  should be used to avoid adding it to the world file:

After changing any global USE flags in make.conf that affect the eselect package, emerge world to update to the new USE flags:

Modules
Install an eselect module just like any other package. For example, for the module:

Some modules will be pulled in when installing packages that depend on them.

See the eselect modules section for information on finding optional modules for installation.

Invocation
Just running, or for a little more information, will provide usage information and list all installed modules and their function:

Modules
Gentoo has tens of eselect modules available, to automate various system configuration tasks. Several modules allow to select between optional subsytems, such as which installed vi editor package to use, emacs distribution to be default, or what shell to use for login...

Some modules are shipped by default with eselect, while other modules can be installed from the Gentoo repository.

See the Invocation section above for how to list all the modules that are currently installed.

Default modules
These modules are maintained as part of the eselct project, so they should be available as long as the package is installed.

Editor
Manage the EDITOR environment variable, this determines what many CLI programs will run to edit text files.

See setting default text editor.

Env
Manage environment variables set in.

Kernel
The symlink should point to the currently running kernel, this can be done with.

See setting the kernel link with eselect.

Locale
Manage the LANG environment variable, this sets the system language for users, date formats etc.

See the handbook, localization guide and UTF-8 article.

Modules
Query eselect modules.

Pager
Manage the PAGER environment variable, this will influence what programs will use to display pages of text to the user.

Profile
Manage the make.profile symlink, this is an important configuration item for Portage, and for the whole system.

See handbook, and the article about profiles.

Rc
Manage /etc/init.d scripts in runlevels.

Visual
Manage the VISUAL environment variable, to set the default text editor for capable terminals.

See the text editor article.

Additional modules
Here are some of the modules that can be installed from the Gentoo repository.


 * Eselect/Repository
 * eselect fontconfig
 * eselect php cli
 * eselect php apache2
 * eselect python