According to the site docs, /etc/portage/package.unmask can be used to unmask packages on a selective basis. For me this does NOT work, According to some old bugreports, the /etc/portage/package.unmask was ONLY to unmask pacakges listed in /usr/portage/profiles/package.mask WHY??? If I want to run the latest and greatest ALSA(1.0.3b) instead of the ancient 0.9.8 that is unmasked I now have the INDIVIDUALLY emerge packages after every emerge sync as emerge world ALWAYS tries to downgrade alsa to the ancient release. I DO NOT want to run ALL unstable versions ( by setting ARCH to ~x86), which is why /etc/portage/profiles.unmask is a GOOD IDEA if it applies to ALL packages, NOT the contents of /usr/portage/profiles/package.mask Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. add entries into /etc/portage/package.unmask allowing ALSA 2.emerge world -uDp 3. Actual Results: emerge tries to unmerge ALSA, now if I want to emerge world I either have to A. allow it to downgrade all of my ALSA drivers/tools and install the rest of the new packages OR B. manually install all of the newly listed updates (skipping the ALSA ones) can NOT use emerge world -uUDp, as that reports a blocking failure with regards to ALSA emerge world -uUDp These are the packages that I would merge, in order: Calculating world dependencies \ !!! all ebuilds that could satisfy ">=media-libs/alsa-lib-1.0.3" have been masked. !!! possible candidates are: - media-libs/alsa-lib-1.0.3b-r1 (masked by: ~keyword) - media-libs/alsa-lib-1.0.3b (masked by: ~keyword) !!! (dependency required by "media-sound/alsa-utils-1.0.3" [ebuild]) !!! Problem with ebuild media-sound/alsa-utils-1.0.3 !!! Possibly a DEPEND/*DEPEND problem. !!! Depgraph creation failed. Expected Results: /etc/portage/package.unmask should allow selective unmasking of ANY PACKAGE in the ENTIRE portage tree, allowing testers to test various packages at a time without unleasing a rush of potential problems by setting ARCH to ~x86(or ~ppc,~sparc,~alpha,~mips..) which allows all "developmental" versions to install on the next emerge world --update emerge info Portage 2.0.50-r1 (default-x86-1.4, gcc-3.3.2, glibc-2.3.2-r9, 2.4.25) ================================================================= System uname: 2.4.25 i686 Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 1.50GHz Gentoo Base System version 1.4.3.13 Autoconf: sys-devel/autoconf-2.58-r1 Automake: sys-devel/automake-1.7.7 ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86" AUTOCLEAN="yes" CFLAGS="-mcpu=pentium4 -O2 -fomit-frame-pointer -funroll-loops -pipe" CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu" COMPILER="gcc3" CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xkb /usr/kde/2/share/config /usr/kde/3.2 /share/config /usr/kde/3/share/config /usr/lib/mozilla/defaults/pref /usr/share/ config /var/bind /var/qmail/control" CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/gconf /etc/terminfo /etc/env.d" CXXFLAGS="-mcpu=pentium4 -O2 -fomit-frame-pointer -funroll-loops -pipe" DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles" FEATURES="autoaddcvs ccache sandbox" GENTOO_MIRRORS="ftp://gentoo.mirrors.pair.com/ ftp://ftp.ussg.iu.edu/pub/linux/g entoo http://csociety-ftp.ecn.purdue.edu/pub/gentoo ftp://gentoo.noved.org/" MAKEOPTS="-j2" PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages" PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp" PORTDIR="/usr/portage" PORTDIR_OVERLAY="" SYNC="rsync://rsync.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage" USE="X aalib alsa apm arts avi berkdb cdr crypt cups dga dvd dvdr encode esd foo maticdb gdbm gif gnome gpm gtk gtk2 imlib java jpeg kde ldap libg++ libwww mad m ikmod mmx motif mozilla mpeg mysql ncurses nls oggvorbis opengl oss pam pdflib p erl png python qt quicktime readline sdl slang spell sse ssl svga tcltk tcpd tru etype x86 xml2 xmms xosd xv zlib"
There is package.unmask and package.keywords, one applies to package.mask the other to KEYWORDS (you can read more about them in `man portage`).
