Gentoolkit

Gentoolkit is Article description::a suite of tools to ease the administration of a Gentoo system, and [[Portage in particular.]]

Gentoo is a very unique distribution, with certain specifics that are not present in other systems. Several tools developed to help with Gentoo usage have been contributed, and are grouped in the package.

Gentoolkit contains tools to help users manage packages and keep track of what is going on in their systems. Most users - particularly those who update systems often - will benefit from having Gentoolkit installed.

The Gentoolkit commands have man pages, type "man " for each command for full documentation.

euse
is used to set (disable/enable) USE flags in make.conf, without having to edit the file directly. It is also used to get detailed information about use flags like description, status of flags (enabled/disabled), type of flag (global/local), etc.

For more information on USE flags, please refer to the USE Flags. See for complete help and all options.

Viewing USE flags
The command shows the current active USE flags and and where they are activated.

There are 7 "columns" that uses to show whether a flag is set/unset and where the flag has been set. Upper case for set, lower case for unset:
 * +/-: active or not
 * "E": set in the Environment
 * "C": set in
 * "D": set in
 * "G": set in
 * "F": set in use.force
 * "m": flipped in use.mask

Full positive values would be, full negative values would be  , full missing values would be.

Example output (truncated):

Similarly the command is used to view active global USE flags. The command does the same for active local USE flags. and  are sub-options to  and need an option before them (like  ) to function correctly.

Setting, and unsetting USE flags
is able to set or unset USE flags. The commands used for this are (enable a flag) and  (disable a flag).

Enabling a USE flag:

The file looks like so after the command was ran:

Disabling a USE flag:

Again, the file after the command:

revdep-rebuild
This tool is Gentoo's Reverse Dependency rebuilder. It will scan the installed ebuilds to find packages that have become broken as a result of an upgrade of a package they depend on. It can emerge those packages for users automatically but it can also happen that a given package does not work with the currently installed dependencies, in which case the broken package should be upgraded to a more recent version.

will pass flags to which lets the   flag pass through, to see what is going to be emerged again before going any further.

To rebuild some packages run without the   flag and the listed packages will be emerged again.

eread
is a simple utility to display elog files produced by Portage since version 2.1. The saving of elog files can be enabled by setting a couple of variables in :

Once elog has been set up to satisfaction, run to view the log files.

Select a number and the file will be displayed using the paging program specified in the PAGER environment variable. If PAGER is not set, it will use. The PAGER environmental variable can be set using (module  ).

After displaying the elog item, the user will be prompted to delete the file.

eclean
is a tool to remove old source files and old binary packages from the system.

When building and installing packages, the source files are downloaded and preserved in DISTDIR, usually. This can accumulate several gigabytes of material over time if it is not cleaned periodically. Users should run to clean source files from DISTDIR.

It is possible to create archives of installed packages by using or. These archived packages are kept in PKGDIR, usually. When they are no longer needed, or if they are too old, can be run to remove them from PKGDIR. It is a good way to ensure that any binary packages on the system are only the latest versions.

For more information on and tips on maintaining a cruft-free system, please read  or check the eclean article.