Re: [gentoo-amd64] Change Install Prefix

[Frank Peters]

On Thu, 30 Apr 2009 15:29:00 -0400
Drake Donahue <donahue95@×××××××.net> wrote:

> > >
> > perhaps you like to go with a prefixed portage:
> > http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/gentoo-alt/prefix/
> >
> >From http://linuxreviews.org/gentoo/ebuilds/
>
> Make a folder where you will store your own ebuilds
>
> mkdir -p /usr/local/portage
>
> and set that folder in /etc/make.conf:
>
> PORTDIR_OVERLAY=/usr/local/portage
>
> The folder structure in your overlay folder should be the same as found
> in /usr/portage.
>

As I understand things, overlays could not be the answer because they
are intended only for packages outside of the standard portage tree.
I want to install some standard packages into an alternative location.

But Prefix appears promising.  I'll have to investigate.

Can Prefix replace Portage entirely?  That is, can Prefix be used
to maintain an ordinary Gentoo system in place of Portage?

Since I would only want to relocate a relatively small number of packages,
another solution I am considering is to emerge with the option
--buildpkgonly to create a binary package.  This package can then be
unpacked to the desired location.  Also, sed can be used to change all
instances of /usr/lib64, /usr/include, etc.,  in the *.la and *.pc
files to the appropriate directory.  The file package.provided would
also have to updated to inform portage that the package is actually
available.  This may seem rather tedious, but a shell script could
automate the process.  It may not be elegant, but it would work.

Frank Peters