I would like a "local" category in Portage, which isn't used by Gentoo for "official" ebuilds, but instead can be used by individual system administrators to house custom ebuilds. I think this would help administrators of large numbers of systems greatly, because they can use this functionality to either distribute custom builds of apps which may be used internally, or maintain a centralized repository for configuration data. Thanks in advance. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce:
Already found PORTDIR_OVERLAY? See http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/portage-user.xml I think it does exactly what you are looking for.
Yes, I have, and that's not what I'm talking about. When you create your own ebuilds in Portage (and shove them in PORTDIR_OVERLAY), you are limited to using the categories which are listed in /usr/portage/profiles/categories. I have several servers running Gentoo which I manage, all of which must have the same configuration (packages, files in /etc, ...). To this end, I've created ebuilds which contain that configuration. It's easier for me to do it this way because (a) I have to distribute a common set of configuration files, some of which have server-specific modifications (etc-update is a great tool to use here), and (b) I need a specific set of packages installed. I know I can use the world file for (b), but I can't do the same for (a). (Plus, it's easier to propagate ebuilds than it is to propagate the world file.) There is no suitable category for these ebuilds (e.g. sys-config or sys-profiles, or something similar), so I have been putting them in app-admin in my PORTDIR_OVERLAY tree. I would like a local category, because these ebuilds don't really belong in any of the already- existing categories, and I feel that local sysadmins should have a category all to themselves (hence the generic name "local").
I have no problem with this. It can be added to rsync's exclude directories. Seemant?
I think this makes sense, personally
The new /etc/portage/categories file should fix this issue :)
