(If you *just* received this message, these changes will be appearing on
anoncvs/rsync in ~5 mins... I need to sleep :)

Hi all,

Portage 1.8.5 has been released and contains a number of important
feature enhancements.  First, this new version of Portage completes the
merge process (the process of copying files to your live filesystem)
about twice as quickly as previous versions.

The other new feature that most people will be interested is the new
"update" and "--world update" functionality:

Type "emerge update" to upgrade all core system components on your
system.  Most up-to-date Gentoo Linux users know about this feature
already, since it's been around since 1.8.1, however...

*NEW* -- Type "emerge --world update" to *fully* upgrade all components
on your system -- all core components as well as upgrades to all your
installed packages.  This is the "full system upgrade" functionality
that everyone's been waiting for!

Both features support the "--pretend" option.

In addition, Portage 1.8.5 features path sandboxing functionality, which
in effect "locks down" ebuilds so they can't do any direct modifications
to your real filesystem except in certain critical sections.  Any
sandbox violations will cause an ebuild to abort.

Portage 1.8.5 also features Geert Bevin's new fine-grained MAINTAINER
variable.  To enable sandboxing, add this to /etc/make.conf:

MAINTAINER="sandbox"

You can also enable the sandbox on a temporary basis as follows:

# MAINTAINER="sandbox" emerge foo/bar

Unless you want to use the sandbox, most users will not want MAINTAINER
to be defined.  However, for developers, the new MAINTAINER features are
invaluable.  Here's a reasonable default setting for all people with cvs
read/write access:

MAINTAINER="digest cvs sandbox"

Here are the MAINTAINER flags now supported:

sandbox: enables path sandboxing
digest: automatically create digests for new ebuilds
cvs: automatically commit new digests to cvs
noclean: turn off automatic cleaning of dirs in /var/tmp/portage
noauto: don't execute prior ebuild steps automatically

Thanks to everyone who contributed to this Portage release!

Best Regards,

-- 
Daniel Robbins                                  <drobbins@g.o>
Chief Architect/President                       http://www.gentoo.org 
Gentoo Technologies, Inc.