Handbook:SPARC/Portage/Tools

SPARC Handbook
Installation
About the installation
Choosing the media
Configuring the network
Preparing the disks
The stage file
Installing base system
Configuring the kernel
Configuring the system
Installing tools
Configuring the bootloader
Finalizing
Working with Gentoo
Portage introduction
USE flags
Portage features
Initscript system
Environment variables
Working with Portage
Files and directories
Variables
Mixing software branches
Additional tools
Custom package repository
Advanced features
OpenRC network configuration
Getting started
Advanced configuration
Modular networking
Wireless
Adding functionality
Dynamic management

dispatch-conf

dispatch-conf is a tool that aids in merging the ._cfg0000_<name> files. ._cfg0000_<name> files are generated by Portage when it wants to overwrite a file in a directory protected by the CONFIG_PROTECT variable.

With dispatch-conf, users are able to merge updates to their configuration files while keeping track of all changes. dispatch-conf stores the differences between the configuration files as patches or by using the RCS revision system. This means that if someone makes a mistake when updating a config file, the administrator can revert the file to the previous version at any time.

When using dispatch-conf, users can ask to keep the configuration file as-is, use the new configuration file, edit the current one or merge the changes interactively. dispatch-conf also has some nice additional features:

• Automatically merge configuration file updates that only contain updates to comments.
• Automatically merge configuration files which only differ in the amount of whitespace.

Edit /etc/dispatch-conf.conf first and create the directory referenced by the archive-dir variable. Then, execute dispatch-conf:

root #dispatch-conf

When running dispatch-conf, each changed config file will be reviewed one at a time. Press u to update (replace) the current config file with the new one and continue to the next file. Press z to zap (delete) the new config file and continue to the next file. The n key will instruct dispatch-conf to skip to the next file. This can be done to delay a merge until a future time. Once all config files have been taken care of, dispatch-conf will exit. At any time, q can be used to exit the application as well.

For more information, check out the dispatch-conf man page. It describes how to interactively merge current and new config files, edit new config files, examine differences between files, and more.

user $man dispatch-conf

quickpkg

With quickpkg users can create archives of the packages that are already merged on the system. These archives can be used as prebuilt packages. Running quickpkg is straightforward: just add the names of the packages to archive.

For instance, to archive curl, orage, and procps:

root #quickpkg curl orage procps

The prebuilt packages will be stored in $PKGDIR (/var/cache/binpkgs/ by default). These packages are placed in $PKGDIR/CATEGORY.

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