EBUILD(1)

NAME
ebuild - manual page for the ebuild program, a low level interface to the Portage system.

SYNOPSIS
ebuild file command [command]...

DESCRIPTION
The ebuild program is a direct interface to the Portage system. It allows for direct action upon an ebuild with specific subcommands or groups of commands to perform in a specific ebuild's context and functions. Accepting an ebuild script and one or more commands as arguments, the ebuild program parses the ebuild script and execute the specified commands. Commands exist to fetch sources, unpack sources, compile sources, install object files into a temporary directory "image", merge the image to the local filesystem, create a bzipped tarball package out of the image, and more.

FILE
This must be a valid ebuild script. For further information read ebuild(5).

COMMANDS

help
    Show a condensed form of the man page along with a lot of package specific information.

setup
    Run all package specific setup actions and exotic system checks.

clean
    Cleans the temporary build directory that Portage has created for this particular ebuild file. The temporary build directory normally contains the extracted source files as well as a possible "install image" (all the files that will be merged to the local filesystem or stored in a package). The location of the build directory is set by the BUILD_PREFIX variable. For information on what this variable is, run emerge [-v] info, or to override this variable, see make.conf(5). Note: Portage cleans up almost everything after a package has been successfully merged unless FEATURES contains 'noclean'. Adding noclean to FEATURES will cause a lot of files to remain and will consume large amounts of space, very quickly. It is not recommended to leave this on unless you have use for the sources post-merge. Optionally one may, manual clean rm -rf /var/tmp/portage will take care of all of these files.

fetch
    Checks to see if all the sources specified in SRC_URI are available in DISTDIR (see make.conf(5) for more information) and have a valid md5 checksum. If the sources aren't available, an attempt is made to download them from the locations specified in SRC_URI. If multiple download locations are listed for a particular file, Portage pings each location to see which location is closer. (May not be true presently.) The Gentoo Linux mirrors defined by GENTOO_MIRRORS is always considered first. If for some reason the current or just-downloaded sources' md5 digests don't match those recorded in files/digest-[package]-[version-rev], a warning is printed and ebuild exits with an error code of 1.

digest
    Creates a digest file for the package in /usr/portage/[category]/[package]/files/. This digest file lists the md5sum's of all the files found in the SRC_URI. If the fetched source of the package is corrupt/bogus in some way, the md5sum will catch this.

unpack
    Extracts the sources to a subdirectory in the build directory (BUILD_PREFIX) by running the src_unpack() function in the ebuild file. If no src_unpack() function has been specified, a default src_unpack() function is used that extracts all the files specified in SRC_URI. The sources are normally extracted to ${BUILD_PREFIX}/[package]-[version-rev]/work. This particular directory can be referenced by using the ${WORKDIR} variable. If you're creating an ebuild, you'll want to make sure that the S (source directory) variable defined at at the top of your ebuild script points to the directory that contains your extracted sources. This directory is defined by default to be ${WORKDIR}/${P}, so it is not often required. The src_unpack() function is also responsible for making the appropriate patches to the sources so that they're ready for compilation.

compile
    Compiles the extracted sources by running the the src_compile() function specified in the ebuild file. When src_compile() starts, the current working directory will be set to ${S}. When src_compile() completes, the sources should be fully compiled.

test
    Run package specific test cases to verify that everything was built properly.

preinst
    Run package specific actions that need to be done before the package is installed into the live filesystem.

install
    Installs the package to the temporary install directory by running the src_install() function. When completed, the install directory (${BUILD_PREFIX}/[package]-[version-rev]/image) will contain all the files that should either be merged to the local file system or included in a binary package.

postinst
    Run package specific actions that need to be done after the package is installed into the live filesystem. Usually helpful messages are shown here.

qmerge
    This function installs all the files in the install directory to the live filesystem. The process works as follows: first, the pkg_preinst() function (if specified) is run. Then, the files are merged into the live filesystem, and the installed files' md5 digests are recorded in /var/db/pkg/${CATEOGRY}/${PN}-[version-rev]/CONTENTS. After all the files have been merged, the pkg_postinst() function (if specified) is executed.

merge
    Normally, to merge an ebuild, you need to fetch, unpack, compile, install and qmerge. If you're simply interested in merging the ebuild, you can use this command, which will perform all these steps for you, stopping along the way if a particular step doesn't complete successfully.

unmerge
    This function first executes the pkg_prerm function (if specified). Then it removes all files from the live filesystem that have a valid md5 checksum and mtime in the package contents file. Any empty directories are recursively removed. Finally, it runs pkg_postrm function (if specified). It is safe to merge a new version of a package first and then unmerge the old one. In fact, this is the recommended package upgrade method.

prerm
    Run package specific actions that need to be executed before the package is removed from the filesystem. See also unmerge.

postrm
    Run package specific actions that need to be executed after the package is removed from the filesystem. See also unmerge.

config
    Run package specific actions needed to be executed after the emerge process has completed. This usually entails configuration file setup or other similar setups that the user may wish to run.

package
    This command is a lot like the merge command, except that after fetching, unpacking, compiling and installing, a .tbz2 binary package tarball is created and stored in ${PKGDIR}/All (${PKGDIR} defaults to /usr/portage/packages). A symbolic link is created in ${PKGDIR}/${CATEGORY} that points to the package in ${PKGDIR}/All.

rpm Builds a RedHat RPM package from the files in the temporary install directory. At the moment, the ebuild's dependency information is not incorporated into the RPM.

REPORTING BUGS
Please report bugs via http://bugs.gentoo.org/

SEE ALSO
emerge(1), ebuild(5), make.conf(5)

The /usr/sbin/ebuild.sh script.

The helper apps in /usr/lib/portage/bin.

FILES

/etc/make.conf
    Contains variables for the build-process and overwrites those in make.globals.

AUTHORS
Achim Gottinger <achim@gentoo.org>
Daniel Robbins <drobbins@gentoo.org>
Nicholas Jones <carpaski@gentoo.org>
Mike Frysinger <vapier@gentoo.org>

CVS HEADER
$Header: /var/cvsroot/gentoo-src/portage/man/ebuild.1,v 1.16 2004/09/17 00:17:10 vapier Exp $"