Translations:Eclean/7/en
From Gentoo Wiki
By default, source files are located in the /var/cache/distfiles directory, while binary packages are located in the /var/cache/binpkgs directory. The locations for each can be changed by altering the DISTDIR and the PKGDIR variables respectively in /etc/portage/make.conf. Both locations can grow quite big if not periodically cleaned; this is the reason eclean was created.