EGENCACHE¶

NAME¶

egencache - generate metadata cache for ebuild repositories

SYNOPSIS¶

egencache [options] --update [ATOM]...

DESCRIPTION¶

The egencache program generates metadata cache for ebuild repositories and stores it in the metadata/cache/ directory within the repository itself, for distribution.

ACTIONS¶

--update [ATOM] ...

Update the metadata/cache/ directory (generate metadata as necessary). If no package atoms are specified then all will be updated. See ebuild(5) for the details on package atom syntax.

--update-changelogs

Update the ChangeLog files from SCM logs (supported only in git repos).

--update-use-local-desc

Update the profiles/use.local.desc file from metadata.xml.

OPTIONS¶

--cache-dir=CACHE_DIR

Location of the intermediate metadata cache which is stored in a different format that includes eclass state. See the BUGS section for information about why this is necessary.
Defaults to /var/cache/edb/dep.

--config-root=PORTAGE_CONFIGROOT

Location of portage config files.
Defaults to /.

--ignore-default-opts

Causes EGENCACHE_DEFAULT_OPTS to be ignored.

--jobs=JOBS

Specifies the maximum number of ebuild processes to spawn simultaneously. Also see the related --load-average option.

--load-average=LOAD

Specifies that maximum load allowed when spawning multiple jobs.

--portdir=PORTDIR

Override the portage tree location.

--portdir-overlay=PORTDIR_OVERLAY

Override the PORTDIR_OVERLAY variable (requires that --repo is also specified).

--preserve-comments

Preserve the comments found in the output use.local.desc file. This requires the output file to exist before egencache is called.

--repo=REPO

Name of the repo to operate on (default repo is located at PORTDIR). The name should correspond the value of a repo_name entry (see portage(5)) from one of the repositories that is configured via the PORTDIR or PORTDIR_OVERLAY variables (see make.conf(5)).

--rsync

When used together with the --update action, this enables a workaround for cases in which the content of a cache entry changes and neither the file mtime nor size changes, preventing rsync from detecting changes. Such cases are handled by bumping the mtime on the ebuild (and the corresponding cache entry). This option should only be needed for distribution via something like rsync(1), which relies on timestamps and file sizes to detect changes (see bug 139134). It's not needed with git(1) since that uses a more thorough mechanism which allows it to detect changed inode numbers (described in racy-git.txt in the git technical docs).

--tolerant

Exit successfully if only minor errors occurred, such as skipped cache updates due to ebuilds that either fail to source or are not sourced due to invalid Manifest entries.

--use-local-desc-output=ULD_OUTPUT

output file for use.local.desc data (or '-' for stdout)

ENVIRONMENT OPTIONS¶

EGENCACHE_DEFAULT_OPTS

If this variable is set in make.conf(5) then any options that it contains will be added to the beginning of the command line on every invocation. These options will not be added if the --ignore-default-opts option is specified.

BUGS¶

There are significant limitations associated with the metadata cache format that is distributed in the metadata/cache/ directory of the repository. These limitations are related to the cache validation mechanism. Currently, the validation mechanism involves comparison of a cache entry mtime to the mtime of the corresponding ebuild(5). This mechanism is unreliable in cases when eclass changes result in metadata changes, since no information about eclass state is available in the cache. Also, since the mtime of the cache entry must correspond to that of the ebuild, the cache format is only suitable for distribution via protocols that preserve timestamps (such as rsync(1)). For cache that is distributed via git(1) repositories, there is currently a workaround implemented in emerge(1) --sync which updates ebuild mtimes to match their corresponding cache entries (except for ebuilds that are modified relative to HEAD).

In order to solve the above problems, a future extension to the cache format will include additional validation data in the form of digests for both the ebuild and its inherited eclasses. Until the cache format has been extended in this way, it is necessary to enable metadata-transfer in FEATURES (see make.conf(5)). This causes intermediate cache (in a different format that includes eclass state) to be generated inside the directory which is configurable via the --cache-dir option.

REPORTING BUGS¶

Please report bugs via http://bugs.gentoo.org/

AUTHORS¶

Zac Medico <zmedico@gentoo.org>

FILES¶

/etc/make.conf

Contains variables.