Re: [gentoo-user] Installing specific layman packages & eix-test-obsolete

[Neil Bothwick]

On Tue, 11 Dec 2012 14:32:01 -0800, Grant wrote:

> > This is against the idea of an overlay: If you want only cerain
> > packages copy them into your local overlay and do not add the whole
> > overlay to portage. (But you might get troubles if you do not use
> > eclasses or other ebuilds from the overlay which might contain
> > corresponding patches).
>
> Surely you can see the value in finding an ebuild for a package you like
> that isn't in portage, adding the overlay associated with that ebuild
> via layman, somehow specifying that you only want that package from the
> overlay, and running 'layman -S' to stay on top of version bumps.  If I
> understand your suggestion correctly, it would involve manually checking
> for version bumps and recopying them into the local overlay.  That
> doesn't seem very Gentoo.

Agreed. I may not want to add the whole overlay. That's fine for things
like the kde or vmware overlays that have a specific focus, but sometimes
I find a package I want isn't in portage but is in an overlay, but adding
that overlay pulls in all sorts of other packages, sometimes beta or
unstable versions.

However, the idea of setting overlay order sounds interesting as it would
at least solve part of the problem. For now, symlinking rather than
copying, which I tried before, at least keeps things up to date.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

Snacktrek, n.:
 The peculiar habit, when searching for a snack, of constantly
 returning to the refrigerator in hopes that something new will have
 materialized.