dev stack

I am running my Gentoo system for a few years now. This is my loose collection of hints and tricks. These notes are work in progress.

Gentoo

portage

The primary package manager of Gentoo is called portage. portage will keep track on the dependencies of each package installed. Almost every package will be compiled from source.

use flags

Within a Gentoo system, use flags can enable or disable package specific features. The app-portage/gentoolkit contains some useful portage tools. One of them is equery which can be used to inspect packages.

For example:

$ equery u vim
[ Legend : U - final flag setting for installation]
[        : I - package is installed with flag     ]
[ Colors : set, unset                             ]
 * Found these USE flags for app-editors/vim-8.1.0648:
 U I
 - - X                              : Link console vim against X11 libraries to enable title and clipboard
                                      features in xterm
 + + acl                            : Add support for Access Control Lists
 - - cscope                         : Enable cscope interface
 - - debug                          : Enable extra debug codepaths, like asserts and extra output. If you
                                      want to get meaningful backtraces see
                                      https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:Quality_Assurance/Backtraces
 + + gpm                            : Add support for sys-libs/gpm (Console-based mouse driver)
 + + lua                            : Enable Lua scripting support
 ...
 + + python                         : Add optional support/bindings for the Python language
 ...
 - - racket                         : Enable support for Scheme using dev-scheme/racket
 + + ruby                           : Add support/bindings for the Ruby language
 + + tcl                            : Add support the Tcl language
 - - terminal                       : Enable terminal emulation support
 - - vim-pager                      : Install vimpager and vimmanpager links

If you like to enable x support for vim you could simply do

USE="X" emerge -avq app-editors/vim

or you can simply add a file to /etc/portage/package.use/ with the content

app-editors/vim X

to enable the X feature for the next time vim is emerged.

If you like to have a feature globally enabled you can add use flags to the /etc/portage/make.conf file.

profile

There are different profiles present for a Gentoo system.

With app-admin/eselect you can

$ eselect profile list
Available profile symlink targets:
  ...
  [12]  default/linux/amd64/17.0 (stable)
  [13]  default/linux/amd64/17.0/selinux (stable)
  [14]  default/linux/amd64/17.0/hardened (stable)
  [15]  default/linux/amd64/17.0/hardened/selinux (stable)
  [16]  default/linux/amd64/17.0/desktop (stable) *
  [17]  default/linux/amd64/17.0/desktop/gnome (stable)
  [18]  default/linux/amd64/17.0/desktop/gnome/systemd (stable)
  [19]  default/linux/amd64/17.0/desktop/plasma (stable)
  [20]  default/linux/amd64/17.0/desktop/plasma/systemd (stable)
  [21]  default/linux/amd64/17.0/developer (stable)
  [22]  default/linux/amd64/17.0/no-multilib (stable)
  [23]  default/linux/amd64/17.0/no-multilib/hardened (stable)
  [24]  default/linux/amd64/17.0/no-multilib/hardened/selinux (stable)
  [25]  default/linux/amd64/17.0/systemd (stable)
  [26]  default/linux/amd64/17.0/x32 (dev)
  ...

choose a suitable profile.

For a minimal desktop system the profile 16 is suitable.

A system update after a profile change

emerge --sync && emerge -uNDqv world

can take several hours of compile time.

beyond base system

After having a reboot consistent system, more packages can be installed

portage tools

First of all, some portage tools should be installed.

app-portage/eix

app-portage/eix has some features, including searching the portage tree.

app-portage/genlop

If you want to estimate a package upgrade time, app-portage/genlop is your friend. A call to

$ genlop -c

shows the current emerge time and the estimated time.

Since the logs are parsed to retrieve the estimated time, the estimation only works for packages that have already been emerged.

app-portage/gentoolkit

The app-portage/gentoolkit package has some portage tools, you need to work with a Gentoo system.

A often used tool is equery. It helps you to get information about a Gentoo package.

$ equery
Gentoo package query tool
Usage: equery [global-options] module-name [module-options]

global options
 -h, --help              display this help message
 -q, --quiet             minimal output
 -C, --no-color          turn off colors
 -N, --no-pipe           turn off pipe detection
 -V, --version           display version info

modules (short name)
 (b)elongs               list what package FILES belong to
 (c)hanges               list changelog entries for ATOM
 chec(k)                 verify checksums and timestamps for PKG
 (d)epends               list all packages directly depending on ATOM
 dep(g)raph              display a tree of all dependencies for PKG
 (f)iles                 list all files installed by PKG
 h(a)s                   list all packages for matching ENVIRONMENT data stored in
                         /var/db/pkg
 (h)asuse                list all packages that have USE flag
 ke(y)words              display keywords for specified PKG
 (l)ist                  list package matching PKG
 (m)eta                  display metadata about PKG
 (s)ize                  display total size of all files owned by PKG
 (u)ses                  display USE flags for PKG
 (w)hich                 print full path to ebuild for PKG

Because you use this tool so often, it is practical to create some aliases in your .bashrc

version control

dev-vcs/git

Working with version control is a mandatory tasks for a software developer. git is the most widely used version control software.

dev-vcs/tig

Although you can easily use git from command line, tig has a ncurses-based text-mode interface. It’s handy, to get a quick overview of a repository.

vim

app-editors/vim

It does not matter which editor you use, it should only suit you best. In my case it is vim. You can see more about vim in my notes.

system

app-admin/sudod

There are some system specific packages, which slightly depends on your setup. sudo let you execute commands as an other user. This is often used in conjunction with rootn actions.

net-misc/dhcpcd

net-misc/dhcpcd is a dhcp daemon, which should be started during boot, so that the network is up and running.

net-wireless/wpa_supplicant

When you use a wireless network, net-wireiless/wpa_supplicant can help you configure a wireless network. The console version of the config tool is slightly more complicated than the X11 version. See the documentation for further information.

net-misc/ntp

The net-misc/ntp daemon is not quiet necessary, but convenient. It sets the system time, when it is necessary.

sys-process/htop

sys-process/htop is a process monitor, where you can also kill processes if necessary.

terminal / bash

app-misc/ranger

When you need a file manager with VI key bindings, app-misc/ranger is your friend.

app-text/tree
sys-apps/the_silver_searcher

non Gentoo packages

dev-python/pip
net-libs/nodejs
dev-haskell/cabal

There are some applications, which can be installed via other package managers They can be installed via

$ pip install pgcli --user

$ npm install sass -g

$ cabal install hakyll

x11

x11-base/xorg-server

app-admin/conky
app-text/evince
app-text/texlive
mail-client/thunderbird-bin
media-gfx/graphviz
media-gfx/feh
x11-apps/xsetroot
x11-misc/dmenu
x11-misc/xscreensaver
x11-terms/xterm
x11-wm/dwm

www-client/firefox-bin
www-client/google-chrome

media-sound/alsa-utils

kernel

sys-apps/pciutils
sys-apps/usbutils
sys-kernel/genkernel
sys-kernel/gentoo-sources

mobile

sys-fs/fuse
sys-fs/simple-mtpfs 
dev-db/postgresql
net-libs/nodejs
sys-fs/dosfstools

package installation

pgcli

An alternative way to query a database from command line

config

The local config file can be found at~/.config/pgcli/config

Set

pager = cat

to get inline results.