> 1. What exactly is masking, and why would these ebuilds be masked (ie, are > they broken, do they smell funny)?
"Masking" ebuilds is a way to make "unstable" packages available to Gentoo users while not emerging them when using default settings. You have to take specific actions to do so. The reasons why an ebuild is marked "masked" can differ: Maybe the software is really unstable, maybe it behaves well but the maintainer thinks it needs some more testing, or maybe the ebuild has some odd dependencies that can cause problems at the moment. The most common way packages are masked is using the KEYWORDS flag. Depending on your architecture (x86, ppc, sparc etc.), emerging masked, "unstable" packages looks like this: ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~arch" emerge package_name So for the common peecee it would be: ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~x86" emerge package_name I strongly suggest to do ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~x86" emerge -pv package_name before to see what dependencies will be updated or freshly installed. Sometimes it isn't worth to have nearly your whole system updated to an "unstable" state just to get a newer version of a specific software. Remember: When doing an usual update world, you have to do "emerge -U world" instead of "emerge -u world" if you do not want your masked packages to get downgraded to "stable" level. Some packages are masked in /usr/portage/profiles/packages.mask, mostly with notes why this is so. I never fiddled around there too much. You have to comment out the ebuilds you want to get unmasked. I had and have a few masked packages running on different boxes without problems (mutt, galeon, opera, vmware etc.), but with different packages at different places YMMV. Regards, Jens -- It's always darkest just before it gets pitch black. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
