Recent versions of portage have brought some confusion with overlays and overriding eclasses. Due to QA issues, zmedico has decided to disable automatic eclass overrides from overlays.

This means that if, for example, you’re using the “kde-testing” overlay, you’ll have to manually tell portage to use any updated eclasses available in the overlay. If you don’t, you might end up with broken packages, depending on the overlay. You should check out the overlay’s guides and/or chat with the developers to find out if overriding is necessary/optional.

To tell portage to use the kde-testing overlay’s eclasses [if any], create the file:
/etc/portage/repos.conf

with the following content:

[gentoo]
eclass-overrides = kde

We’re using “kde” instead of “kde-testing”, because that’s the actual overlay name (found in OVERLAY_FOLDER/profiles/repo_name)

For more information on this issue, read gentoo bug #265747

Tampakrap and I have been working to make KDE 3 out-of-kde-base applications install and work alongside KDE 4.

Most of the work is now done. The eclasses have gained EAPI 2 support, tampakrap converted the misc apps to EAPI 2, we killed some eclass bugs that made some kde-base packages fail and @kde-3.5 and other ebuilds like amarok 1.4 build and install fine next to their 4.2 siblings.

A few more tests left before the changes are merged to the tree

I now have my personal gentoo overlay over at github.

For those not familiar with overlays, they are something like a “repository”. They allow you to add and use ebuilds out of the official portage tree.

In my overlay, called “wirelay”, I usually add fixes from bugs.gentoo.org that I need which haven’t reached the tree yet (and maybe never will). I also keep ebuilds of the latest nvidia drivers and other stuff

To browse the overlay, visit http://github.com/wired/wirelay/tree/master

To add the overlay, install layman ( emerge -av layman ) then run:

layman -f -o http://github.com/wired/wirelay/raw/master/Documentation/wirelay.list -a wirelay

=]

Hello =]

Welcome to my new blog. Previously available @ http://linuxized.blogspot.com, I’ve moved my meaningless typing to a more private space.

Hopefully this will work out well – if not… I guess I can always turn back to blogger..