[gentoo-user] Introduce Manual manipulation during an emerge

[Harry Putnam]

I'm really sorry to keep beating on this portage stuff and I guess I
must be something of a dimwit since I find just about anything to do
with portage and emerge that is outside `emerge -flags whatever'
to be really hard to catch on to, even though (and shouldn't admit
this) I've been running gentoo for at least 5 yrs and probably more.

I read up on the parts I need at times when I run into trouble and get
much coaching and pointers here.   But then in a few mnths, with no
problems I've forgotten the vast bulk of whatever I picked up.  And I
mean even when I've made notes...

Anyway cutting to the chase:

I want to do some manual manipulation to a failing emerge of procmail.

    emerge -v procmail 
  (details here were posted elsewhere but involves somekind missnaming
  of getline in the ebuild)

It fails but has a simple enough fix. It needs to have a sed exchange
take place in the unpacked source.

Running  `sed -i -e 's/getline/get_line/g' src/*.c src/*.h'
In top level of the upacked source will allow it to compile fine.
So once all instances of getline are changed to get_line... it works.

Now how do I go about doing that right during the emerge?

For something like this it seems way overkill to have a separate
custom /usr/local/portage where I build my own.  Especially since I
find that whole process difficult and way overkill for this problem.

Further its something that will almost certainly be fixed soon and
won't be something I have to attend to again.

I'm pretty sure there is some way to introduce custom action during
emerge and remember doing something like that before to fix cvs so
root could commit.  It envolved either a ./configure or make flag that
portage didn't employ... somehow, with coaching here... I was able to
introduce a non-default flag.

Isn't there a simple way to introduce the sed run in procmail sources
during emerge?

Oh, and to fix cvs again too... with this new install I've started from
scratch after nursing one original install and upating over yrs.