When doing emerge -s [package], it will show the package description. However, there is no way to see any longdescription information that may be in the package's metadata.xml file. It would be useful in some cases where the 80 char limit cannot adequately explain the package's purpose to see the expanded description information. There are over 2900 ebuilds that have <longdescription> tags, so that shows it's being used. I would propse showing longdescription if emerge -s -v package is used. For equery, I would add a local option for l which would show the longdescription if requested. equery l package -l I reazlize there is the herdstat package, but that's really not an end user tool, and it makes it more difficult for the user to have to emerge yet another package when the emerge or equery functions should do this already. JM2C. (filing under applications since according to the Compontent: list above, Core system is for sys-*/ yet emerge is part of app-portage.) peter@mars /mnt/src/portage $ sudo emerge info Portage 2.0.54-r2 (default-linux/x86/2005.0, gcc-3.4.5, glibc-2.3.6-r3, 2.6.16-gentoo-r7 i686) ================================================================= System uname: 2.6.16-gentoo-r7 i686 AMD Athlon(tm) XP 2800+ Gentoo Base System version 1.6.14 dev-lang/python: 2.4.2 dev-python/pycrypto: 2.0.1-r5 dev-util/ccache: [Not Present] dev-util/confcache: [Not Present] sys-apps/sandbox: 1.2.17 sys-devel/autoconf: 2.13, 2.59-r7 sys-devel/automake: 1.4_p6, 1.5, 1.6.3, 1.7.9-r1, 1.8.5-r3, 1.9.6-r1 sys-devel/binutils: 2.16.1 sys-devel/libtool: 1.5.22 virtual/os-headers: 2.6.11-r5 ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86" AUTOCLEAN="yes" CBUILD="i686-pc-linux-gnu" CFLAGS="-O2 -march=i686 -fomit-frame-pointer" CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu" CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/kde/2/share/config /usr/kde/3/share/config /usr/share/config /var/qmail/control" CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/eselect/compiler /etc/gconf /etc/env.d" CXXFLAGS="-O2 -march=i686 -fomit-frame-pointer" DISTDIR="/mnt/src/distfiles" FEATURES="autoconfig distlocks sandbox sfperms strict" GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://mirror.datapipe.net/gentoo ftp://gentoo.mirrors.tds.net/gentoo ftp://206.75.217.180/" MAKEOPTS="-j2" PKGDIR="/mnt/src/portage/packages" PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/mnt/src/var/tmp" PORTDIR="/mnt/src/portage" PORTDIR_OVERLAY="/mnt/src/local/portage" SYNC="rsync://rsync.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage" USE="x86 X alsa apm arts artswrappersuid audiofile avi berkdb bitmap-fonts bzip2 cdr cli crypt cups curl dri dvd dvdr eds emboss encode esd exif expat fam flac foomaticdb fortran gd gdbm gif glut gmp gnome gpm gstreamer gtk gtk2 gtkhtml idn imagemagick imlib ipv6 isdnlog java jpeg lcms ldap libg++ libwww mad mikmod mng motif mp3 mpeg mysql ncurses nls nsplugin offensive ogg oggvorbis opengl oss pam pcre pdflib perl png pppd python qt quicktime readline recode reflection samba sdl session slang spell spl ssl svga tcltk tcpd tiff truetype truetype-fonts type1-fonts udev usb vorbis win32codecs xine xml2 xmms xorg xscreensaver xv zlib userland_GNU kernel_linux elibc_glibc" Unset: ASFLAGS, CTARGET, INSTALL_MASK, LANG, LC_ALL, LDFLAGS, LINGUAS, PORTAGE_RSYNC_EXTRA_OPTS, PORTAGE_RSYNC_OPTS
Maybe if someone provides a patch
