/etc/portage/package.use

/etc/portage/package.use provides a more fine grained per-package control of USE flags than the USE variable in /etc/portage/make.conf.

Note
/etc/portage/package.use can either be a single file or a directory containing per-package files.

With the default USE_ORDER setting, the /etc/portage/package.use file or directory will override individual package settings coming from all locations except for the USE environment variable.

Example

FILE /etc/portage/package.useExample with this location as a single file

# Globally disable the unwanted USE flags which were enabled by the profile
*/* -bluetooth -dbus -ldap -libnotify -nls -qt3support -udisks
 
# enable the offensive USE flag for app-admin/sudo
app-admin/sudo offensive
 
# disable mysql support for dev-lang/php
dev-lang/php -mysql 
 
# enable java and set the python interpreter version for libreoffice
app-office/libreoffice java PYTHON_SINGLE_TARGET: python3_9

FILE /etc/portage/package.use/openrctExample with this location as a directory

# Disable Vorbis support in OpenRCT2
games-simulation/openrct2 -vorbis

For more details see the Handbook.

Format

• One DEPEND atom per line with space-delimited USE flags.
• Comment lines begin with # (hash).

Note
See version specifier for information on how to format the package atoms.

Tip
If a package atom specifies a version, a comparison operator must be used.

Automatically generated content

emerge has the --autounmask option enabled by default (see man 1 emerge), so it can generate package.use settings as necessary to satisfy dependencies.

External resources

• https://packages.gentoo.org/useflags - USE flags on Gentoo Packages Database
• Portage man page
• Setting USE_EXPAND flags in package.use - blog post by Bernard Cafarelli
• Cleaning /etc/portage/package.* from unused entries
• Find obsolete USE flags in /etc/portage/package.use - Gentoo forums thread