Abbreviations, terminology, and jargon
As with any unique distribution with a history, specific colloquialisms such as "Portage tree", or deprecated terminology such as "Herds" have influenced conversation in the Gentoo community. In order to aid new community members and harden concepts for existing ones, this article aims to serve as a location to collect terms, definitions, acronyms, colloquialisms, expressions, and all other types of jargon known to the Gentoo community.
If possible, entries under each section should list a link or other type of authoritative upstream citation. Archive.org links are welcome, but only if necessary (example: when citing information from the original Gentoo.org site).
Abbreviations
| Short form | Long form | Explanation |
|---|---|---|
| ABI | Application Binary Interface | wikipedia:ABI |
| API | Application Programming interface | wikipedia:API |
| AT | Arch Testers | ... |
| BGO/bgo/b.g.o | bugs.gentoo.org | Gentoo Bugtracker[1] |
| CI | Continuous Integration | wikipedia:CI |
| CLA | Contributor License Agreement | wikipedia:CLA |
| CLI | Command Line Interface | wikipedia:CLI |
| CoC | Code of Conduct | ... |
| ComRel | Community Relations | Project:ComRel |
| EAPI | Ebuild API | The term ebuild API was invented on the gentoo-dev mailing list. |
| GGO/ggo/g.g.o | gitweb.gentoo.org | Official Gentoo git repositories. |
| GH | GitHub | GitHub hosts the official mirror of Gentoo git repositories [1] |
| GLSA | Gentoo Linux Security Advisories | GLSA |
| GLEP | Gentoo Linux Enhancement Proposal | Project:GLEP |
| IOMMU | Input–output memory management unit | wikipedia:IOMMU |
| LTO | Link Time Optimization | gcc:LTO, Clang |
| m-n | maintainer needed | As in "this package is set to maintainer needed status"[1] |
| PGO | Profile Guided Optimization | wikipedia:PGO |
| PGO/pgo/p.g.o | packages.gentoo.org | Gentoo Packages |
| PIC | Position-Independent Code | wikipedia:PIC |
| PIE | Position-Independent Executables | a security hardening technique; wikipedia:PIE |
| PMASKED | package masked (listed in packages.mask) | PMASKED in bug tickets[1] |
| PMS | Package Manager Specification | Project:Package Manager Specification and latest HTML rendering. |
| PR | Pull Request | request to merge a patch (e.g. on GitHub).[1] |
| p-m | Proxy Maintainer | Project:Proxy Maintainers |
| QA | Quality assurance | Project:Quality Assurance |
| SLOT | slot-dependencies | |
| SOB | Signed Off By | ... |
| stablereq | Stabilization Request | Stable request |
| VDB | /var/db/pkg | Database of installed packages[1] |
Editors: please focus on the not-so-common abbreviations which are important in the Gentoo universe. Well-known general abbreviations like CPU or SCSI would not fit here.
Terminology and jargon
According to Wikipedia, jargon is the specialized terminology associated with a particular field or area of activity. In Gentoo, this means terms such as Portage tree, ebuild repository, genkernel, Profiles, and other terms these not quickly or easily understood by etymology alone.
- Herd
- A deprecated term used to define a group of developers who shared maintenance responsibility for a specific group of ebuilds. Herds are now known as projects (see the full list).
- Genkernel
- A tool created by Gentoo used to automate the build process of the kernel and initramfs.
- Gentoo ebuild repository
- Gentoo repository
- Gentoo repo
- ::gentoo
- gentoo.git
- repo
- Gentoo's official, primary ebuild repository containing elements of the EAPI used to install packages via the package manager. The term "Gentoo ebuild repository", or "Gentoo repository" for short, may now be preferred, for consistency.
- Gentoo tree
- Portage tree
- rsync tree
- "the tree"
- The historic title of the official, primary ebuild repository for Gentoo. Now more of a colloquial reference.
- Portage
- The package management framework for Gentoo. It downloads, unpacks, compiles, and installs packages.
- Tinderbox
- A build bot to identify build and installation issues of Gentoo Linux software packages.
- Upstream
- In the context of Gentoo, usually refers to the projects that create and maintain the software that is available through the Gentoo repository. If asked to "report upstream", refers to using the version control software or bug reporting services provided by the people who manage the original project.