Michael [Plouj] Ploujnikov wrote: > On 3/10/07, Chris <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> I will begin by stating my problem. I have the source code (in >> *.tar.bz2 format) for a couple of pieces of software that are not in the >> Portage tree at all. I would like to compile and install them in such a >> way that I can use them, and even so Portage recognizes them. > > You most likely want to install that software in /usr/local as per > Gentoo's filesystem layout [1]. The way you can do that with > autotoolized software is like this: > > ./configure --prefix=/usr/local > make > make install > > I don't know what you mean by making Portage recognize the software > installed this way. Do you want Portage to be able to uninstall and/or > upgrade this software? If so, the simple answer is you it can't do > that. You have to manage the software outside of Portage yourself. > That's exactly right, which is why it goes into /usr/local. You can however notify portage that you have a certain package on your system with /etc/portage/package.provided - I used this for that kde-env script that was moved last year, as certain pkgs in the tree still depended on its ebuild, but it had been moved to kde-libs (which it blocked.) I unmerged it to get kde-libs, and put an entry in package.provided for pkgs which still had a dependency on it. Once the tree had all been updated I deleted the entry.
package.provided A list of packages (one per line) that portage should assume have been provided. Useful for porting to non-Linux systems. Portage will not attempt to update a package that is listed here unless another package explicitly requires a version that is newer than what has been listed. So in that sense portage will recognise the software for dependency calculation. You should be aware of that last bit; I recommend reading man portage for more explanation. (Oh and man -k is useful if you've not heard of it.) HTH, steveL -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
