eix 0.30.4 (have not tested with unstable) fails to detect 'gentoo' "overlay" (which is the default repo in repos.conf, running on the git mirror (github)), reporting it as EMPTY! Setting PORTDIR_CACHE_METHOD to 'parse' makes it properly populate the database.
Is the metadata/md5-cache subdirectory properly populated? If not, you must run egencache --repo=gentoo --update in an /etc/portage/repo.postsync.d hook (will be very slow the first time, but quicker later unless there are big eclass changes). (There is also the possibility to use emerge --regen and CACHE_METHOD=assign [or flat], but the above is usually a better choice.)
Metadata/md5-cache is not populated (in fact it doesn't exist at all). Based on repo.postsync.d/example, gentoo is meant to come with one pre-generated. The git sync mirror is thus missing this. Could we possibly ship out a default repo.postsync.d script that will generate it if the url appears to be a git repo (and potentially others, if this isn't a git-only thing)?
(In reply to Chloe Kudryavtsev from comment #2) > Metadata/md5-cache is not populated (in fact it doesn't exist at all). Based > on repo.postsync.d/example, gentoo is meant to come with one pre-generated. > The git sync mirror is thus missing this. > > Could we possibly ship out a default repo.postsync.d script that will > generate it if the url appears to be a git repo (and potentially others, if > this isn't a git-only thing)? The git sync mirror does not provide any metadata cache, nor will it ever do so. End users aren't supposed to use the git mirror as their actual gentoo repo, unless they plan to generate metadata themselves -- the mirror is for contributing patches and modifications. This is no different from when we used CVS. End-users should continue to use the rsync mirror, which provides pre-generated metadata, changelogs, thick manifests, and other very useful things. If you really want to use the git mirror, then you need to egencache or emerge --regen as appropriate to generate your metadata cache, or simply not use the tools/commands that require the cache.
For reference: http://github.com/gentoo-mirror maintains a git mirror with generated metadata (of all g.o.g.o hosted repos, as far as I can see). The actual gentoo repository shouldn't be used. Closing as bug is invalid.