[gentoo-user] How do slots work?

[Alan Mackenzie]

Hi, Gentoo.

How do slots work?  I mean I've had a look at some ebuilds and see things
like this:

    SLOT=3

, but with no clues as to how this gets used.  Is there any handy
documentation about this?  I've had a look round the usual places, but
found nothing.

What I really want to do is to try out Gnome 3, to see if it's like what
people say it is, but without endangering my current Gnome 2.32.1.  If I
build Gnome 3, will its executable have a different name?

Thanks for the info!

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).