Eix

eix (developed at Berlios) is a set of utilities for searching, diffing and updating a binary cache of your local portage-trees.

It is made to be more efficient and flexible than emerge's search functionality, comes with colorized output and helps you to more easily find the package information you need.

Installation
To install eix run following command:

after the installation has finished, it is important to update the cache and index all packages on the system.

Updating the cache
Running following command will update the local eix cache and index all packages on the system.

To spare out some typing work, run following command:

which is shorthand to run both commands sequentially:

Adding overlays to the cache
To search not only in the portage tree but all the overlays, add overlays to the cache

Searching for packages
To find package names containing kernel keyword:

Searching for installed -I packages:

Searching in package descriptions -S, printing out results in a compact -c list:

Searching for certain category -C print out a compact -c results list:

Searching for obsolete packages on the system:

= See also =
 * http://www.gentoo.org/news/en/gwn/20061106-newsletter.xml#doc_chap4
 * http://blogs.gentoo.org/genstef/2006/11/03/searching_for_ebuilds_in_overlays_that_a/

= External resources =
 * http://eix.berlios.de
 * http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/Eix