[gentoo-dev] Portage and /usr/local

[Eric Jacoboni]

Hi,

I'm a NetBSD user and Gentoo portage system gives me a new desire to
test Linux on one of my boxes (i used to be a first Linux user, long
time ago).

I've installed it from scratch yesterday and all went fine, but i
think things could be better (from my very own point of vue, that is).

Portage system seems great but i've some questions and i've no found
answers anywhere :

- is this possible to get a description of what a ebuild is for ? On
  *BSD ports, there is a DESCR file which contains a short
  description, along with the master site URL. I find this short
  descr very useful as, given the crowd of availables ebuilds, it's
  sometimes difficult to find the one that best fits my need.

- one of the main reason of my *BSD choice is about files locations
  (when i ls a linux directory, it's like entering my son's bedroom
  ;-). With portage system, i think it could be possible to choose the
  target install directory, via an environnement variable (i've
  searched but i've no find anything like that). With such a variable
  it could be possible to assure that "system" ebuilds are installed
  under /, but "non-systems" ones are installed in another place, say
  /usr/local, if we want so. Seeing gkrellm installed under /usr/bin
  is, definitively, not what i had choosen if i had to install it
  manually. Furthermore, it could un-bloat /etc, /usr/bin directories.

Sorry if it's not the place for such a post (i think is rather a dev
question, hence my choice). Feel free to redirect it to another place
if you think it's better (perhaps a feature-request list ?).
-- 
Éric Jacoboni, né il y a 1334602382 secondes