First of all, thanks for your answer.
> Hi, > > > How do portage determines where a certain package has to be > > installed (eg, /, > > /usr, /usr/local, /opt or whatever)? > > That's in the Makefile of the package, and in the ebuild. From the > user's viewpoint it's predefined.
If so, how can one change these? ie, doing something similar to passing "prefix=/something" to the configure scripts? How can the user choose where to install some package (if it's possible at all, of course).
I dont think it is possible. If you look in the xmame-0.72.1 ebuild, you'll see that it configures using the ${GAMES_BINDIR} and ${GAMES_DATADIR}, which are (as far as i know) fairly new to portage.
The new ebuild takes advantage of keeping all the game files relatively together in /usr/games, wheras the old one just threw it in with everything else.
By default, portage installs everything in /usr, which is proper for a package management system. There are a few ebuilds (openoffice, quake 3, nwn, and blackdown java off the top of my head) that install to nonstandard locations.
> > Another question: how can one find out what package a given > > file belongs to? > > Check out qpkg. I believe it is in the gentoolkit package.
A quick look at the man page shows that qpkg -f only finds files belonging to INSTALLED packages. To query uninstalled packages the -U flag is used, but -f and -U are incompatible. Any other suggestion?
Portage doesnt know what files the package contains until you build and install the package. You could open the ebuild in vim, or your favourite text editor and have a look around:
cd /usr/portage; ls
You should be able to find your way around, possibly with the help of "emerge -s"
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Chris I
Luke, I'm yer father, eh. Come over to the dark side, you hoser.
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