[gentoo-dev] Masking questions

[Emiel Kollof]

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Hi folks,

I'm currently running Gentoo on two machines, a x86 and a ppc machine. I 
understand that there are some packages that are x86 only and stuff, and 
they are automagically masked from compilation.

But some aren't. If one tries to build a masked package, it just says 
it's masked, and nothing else. Since the package.mask file has all these 
nice comments in them about _why_ they are masked, how come we can't see 
the reason when emerge decides to fail merging? That would be a nice 
feature to have.

Not all packages appear to be masked in the packages.mask, and sometimes 
emerge decides a package to be masked, but I can't find the masking 
entry anywhere. Also, sometimes, when I decide to play with something 
experimental, and I put a # in front of the entry in the package.mask 
file, it still is masked by portage. 

Where can I find documentation about how masking (and unmasking) really 
works? I could dig through all the python files, but that would take me 
a quite a while. If I want to play with kde 3.1 beta 2 on ppc for 
instance, I should be able to. Granted, I could use ebuild, but that's 
just too tedious with all the dependancies and stuff. I might be clever, 
but I'm also very lazy (but certainly willing to read the fine material) 
;) 

So, how does (un)masking really work, besides commenting it out of the 
package.mask file? Show me documentation please. :)

Cheers,
Emiel
- -- 
Een oud mannetje staat bij een pas gedolven graf, komt er een klein 
jongetje naar hem toe en zegt: "Lekker he opa, effe d'r uit!" 
  -- Herman Berkien 

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