Emerge

Getting started with emerge

Emerge is the front-end for funtoo's Portage package manager. With emerge it is easy to install, update or remove packages.

Update Package Database

Sync meta-repo. This will update your local Portage tree with the latest Funtoo ebuilds.

root # ego sync

Search packages

Search packages by name.

root # emerge -s firefox
root # emerge --search firefox

Search packages by description.

root # emerge -S web browser
root # emerge --searchdesc web browser

Install packages

Install package.

root # emerge firefox

Install multiple packages.

root # emerge firefox thunderbird

Install package. Ask for confirmation before performing any changes. Show verbose output.

root # emerge -av firefox
root # emerge --ask firefox

Remove packages

Remove package.

root # emerge -C firefox
root # emerge --unmerge firefox

Remove package. Ask for confirmation before performing any changes.

root # emerge -aC firefox

Remove orphaned packages. Ask for confirmation before performing any changes.

root # emerge -a --depclean

Update packages

Update all packages.

root # emerge -uDN @world

Update all packages. Ask for confirmation before performing any changes. Show verbose output.

root # emerge -uavDN @world

When upgrading to a new version of perl, it is necessary to also run perl-cleaner afterwards:

root # emerge -auvDN @world
root # perl-cleaner --all

Note

This requirement of running perl-cleaner will eventually go away, once all perl-related ebuilds are updated to EAPI 5. EAPI 5 is a version of the Ebuild specification that supports smart updating of perl-related bits.

Emerge options

--sync: Updates the portage tree that is located in /usr/portage by default.

--search -s: Searches for matches of the supplied string in the portage tree.

--searchdesc -S: Matches the search string against the description field as well as the package name.

--ask -a: Ask for confirmation before performing any changes.

--pretend -p: Instead of actually performing the merge, simply display what *would* have been installed if --pretend weren't used.

--unmerge -C: Removes all matching packages.

--update -u: Updates packages to the best version available, which may not always be the highest version number due to masking for testing and development.

--deep [DEPTH] -D: force emerge to consider the entire dependency tree of packages, instead of checking only the immediate dependencies of the packages.

--newuse -N: Tells emerge to include installed packages where USE flags have changed since compilation.

--depclean -c: Remove orphaned packages. Cleans the system by removing packages that are not associated with explicitly merged packages.

--autounmask-write: Automatically write package.use settings as necessary to satisfy dependencies.

--resume -r: Resumes the most recent merge list that has been aborted due to an error.

--jobs[=JOBS] -j [JOBS]: Specifies the number of packages to build simultaneously.

--load-average [LOAD]: Specifies that no new builds should be started if there are other builds running and the load average is at least LOAD (a floating-point number).

Configuration

make.conf

Emerge can be configured by editing

/etc/portage/make.conf - See Make.conf

CFLAGS="-march=native -O2 -pipe"
CXXFLAGS="-march=native -O2 -pipe"

MAKEOPTS="-j2"
EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS="--jobs 2 --load-average 2"
INPUT_DEVICES="evdev synaptics"
VIDEO_CARDS="intel i965"
LINGUAS="en en_US en_GB"
ACCEPT_LICENSE="*"

USE="mmx mmxext sse sse2 sse3 ssse3 threads alsa X gtk xcb dri opengl vaapi udev \
     svg x264 xvid gstreamer webm vpx icu bash-completion vim-pager \
     -gnome -xscreensaver -cups -fortran -deprecated -iptables -ipv6 -geoloc \
     -mta -sendmail -kmod -tiff -live -quicktime -real -gpm -themes"

Package.use

Per-package use flags can be configured in

/etc/portage/package.use

x11-wm/dwm savedconfig
x11-drivers/ati-drivers qt4
media-sound/ncmpcpp visualizer clock taglib

package.accept_keywords

If you want to install a package that has not been tested on your architecture you need to edit

/etc/portage/package.accept_keywords

=app-misc/screenfetch-9999 **

Other Resources

For more info see the emerge man page.

user $ man emerge