Several threads in the forums and at least one old bug winge about /usr/portage/distfiles growth. Someone on the forums pointed out that it's OK to delete the lot. The data should always be available from the Internet, and even if not, it's only needed when you emerge the application. This means distfiles is characteristic of a cache; its contents don't belong in /usr. OK, I know it's probably too late to change it, and of course it's possible to specify DISTDIR in make.conf somewhere else. But if you happen to be visiting the documentation (make.conf man, Gentoo handbook, etc.) it might be worth adding some advice. My personal reason for wanting to move it is that my backup regime copies several file systems (/, /home, /root, /boot) but neither /var/tmp nor /tmp, and I'm fed up with finding 50% of my backup is DISTDIR, which is already available from the Internet! Reproducible: Always Portage 2.2_rc20 (default/linux/x86/2008.0/desktop, gcc-4.1.2, glibc-2.6.1-r0, 2.6.22-vs2.2.0.7-gentoolargemem i686) ================================================================= System uname: Linux-2.6.22-vs2.2.0.7-gentoolargemem-i686-Genuine_Intel-R-_CPU_T1300_@_1.66GHz-with-glibc2.0 Timestamp of tree: Thu, 01 Jan 2009 09:45:01 +0000 ccache version 2.4 [enabled] app-shells/bash: 3.2_p33 dev-java/java-config: 1.3.7, 2.1.6-r1 dev-lang/python: 2.5.2-r7 dev-util/ccache: 2.4-r7 dev-util/cmake: 2.4.6-r1 sys-apps/baselayout: 2.0.0 sys-apps/openrc: 0.4.1-r1 sys-apps/sandbox: 1.2.18.1-r2 sys-devel/autoconf: 2.13, 2.61-r2 sys-devel/automake: 1.7.9-r1, 1.8.5-r3, 1.9.6-r2, 1.10.2 sys-devel/binutils: 2.18-r3 sys-devel/gcc-config: 1.4.0-r4 sys-devel/libtool: 1.5.26 virtual/os-headers: 2.6.23-r3 ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86" CBUILD="i686-pc-linux-gnu" CFLAGS="-O3 -march=prescott -pipe" CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu" CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/kde/3.5/env /usr/kde/3.5/share/config /usr/kde/3.5/shutdown /usr/share/config" CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/ca-certificates.conf /etc/env.d /etc/env.d/java/ /etc/fonts/fonts.conf /etc/gconf /etc/gentoo-release /etc/revdep-rebuild /etc/terminfo /etc/udev/rules.d" CXXFLAGS="-O3 -march=prescott -pipe" DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles" FEATURES="ccache collision-protect distlocks fixpackages parallel-fetch preserve-libs protect-owned sandbox sfperms strict unmerge-orphans userfetch" GENTOO_MIRRORS="ftp://ftp.mirrorservice.org/sites/www.ibiblio.org/gentoo/ " LANG="en_GB.utf8" LDFLAGS="-Wl,-O1" LINGUAS="en_GB en_US en" MAKEOPTS="-j2" PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages" PORTAGE_RSYNC_OPTS="--recursive --links --safe-links --perms --times --compress --force --whole-file --delete --stats --timeout=180 --exclude=/distfiles --exclude=/local --exclude=/packages" PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp" PORTDIR="/usr/portage" PORTDIR_OVERLAY="/usr/portage/local/layman/ibm-internal /usr/local/portage" SYNC="rsync://rsync.europe.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage" USE="X acl acpi alsa berkdb bluetooth branding bzip2 cairo cdr cli cracklib crypt cups dbus dri dvb dvd dvdr dvdread eds emboss encode esd evo fam firefox fortran gdbm gif gpm gstreamer gtk hal iconv ipv6 isdnlog java jpeg kde laptop libnotify mad midi mikmod mmx mp3 mpeg mudflap ncurses nls nptl nptlonly ogg opengl openmp pam pcre pdf perl pmu png ppds pppd python qt3 qt3support qt4 quicktime readline reflection sdl session spell spl sse sse2 ssl startup-notification svg sysfs tcpd tiff truetype unicode usb vorbis win32codecs x86 xml xorg xulrunner xv zlib" ALSA_CARDS="ali5451 als4000 atiixp atiixp-modem bt87x ca0106 cmipci emu10k1 emu10k1x ens1370 ens1371 es1938 es1968 fm801 hda-intel intel8x0 intel8x0m maestro3 trident usb-audio via82xx via82xx-modem ymfpci" ALSA_PCM_PLUGINS="adpcm alaw asym copy dmix dshare dsnoop empty extplug file hooks iec958 ioplug ladspa lfloat linear meter mmap_emul mulaw multi null plug rate route share shm softvol" APACHE2_MODULES="actions alias auth_basic authn_alias authn_anon authn_dbm authn_default authn_file authz_dbm authz_default authz_groupfile authz_host authz_owner authz_user autoindex cache dav dav_fs dav_lock deflate dir disk_cache env expires ext_filter file_cache filter headers include info log_config logio mem_cache mime mime_magic negotiation rewrite setenvif speling status unique_id userdir usertrack vhost_alias" ELIBC="glibc" INPUT_DEVICES="keyboard mouse" KERNEL="linux" LCD_DEVICES="bayrad cfontz cfontz633 glk hd44780 lb216 lcdm001 mtxorb ncurses text" LINGUAS="en_GB en_US en" USERLAND="GNU" VIDEO_CARDS="intel" Unset: CPPFLAGS, CTARGET, EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS, FFLAGS, INSTALL_MASK, LC_ALL, PORTAGE_COMPRESS, PORTAGE_COMPRESS_FLAGS, PORTAGE_RSYNC_EXTRA_OPTS
I'd rather not change the default location, since it provides little benefit and changes like this are annoying for users. In order to prune old distfiles, you can use eclean from the gentoolkit package. I can add a reference to eclean in the portage docs.
It seems that we already have references to eclean in the portage docs. Closing as wonfix since it's just not practical to change the default settings.
