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4. Additional Portage Tools

• dispatch-conf
• etc-update
• quickpkg

4.a. dispatch-conf

dispatch-conf is a tool that aids in merging the ._cfg0000_<name> files. ._cfg0000_<name> files are generated by Portage when it wants to overwrite a file in a directory protected by the CONFIG_PROTECT variable.

With dispatch-conf, you are able to merge updates to your configuration files while keeping track of all changes. dispatch-conf stores the differences between the configuration files as patches or by using the RCS revision system. This means that if you make a mistake when updating a config file, you can revert to the previous version of your config file at any time.

When using dispatch-conf, you can ask to keep the configuration file as-is, use the new configuration file, edit the current one or merge the changes interactively. dispatch-conf also has some nice additional features:

• Automatically merge configuration file updates that only contain updates to comments
• Automatically merge configuration files which only differ in the amount of whitespace

Make certain you edit /etc/dispatch-conf.conf first and create the directory referenced by the archive-dir variable.

# dispatch-conf

When running dispatch-conf, you'll be taken through each changed config file, one at a time. Press u to update (replace) the current config file with the new one and continue to the next file. Press z to zap (delete) the new config file and continue to the next file. Once all config files have been taken care of, dispatch-conf will exit. You can also press q to exit any time.

For more information, check out the dispatch-conf man page. It tells you how to interactively merge current and new config files, edit new config files, examine differences between files, and more.

$ man dispatch-conf

4.b. etc-update

You can also use etc-update to merge config files. It's not as simple to use as dispatch-conf, nor as featureful, but it does provide an interactive merging setup and can also auto-merge trivial changes.

However, unlike dispatch-conf, etc-update does not preserve the old versions of your config files. Once you update the file, the old version is gone forever! So be very careful, as using etc-update is significantly less safe than using dispatch-conf.

# etc-update

After merging the straightforward changes, you will be prompted with a list of protected files that have an update waiting. At the bottom you are greeted by the possible options:

Please select a file to edit by entering the corresponding number.
              (-1 to exit) (-3 to auto merge all remaining files)
                           (-5 to auto-merge AND not use 'mv -i'):

If you enter -1, etc-update will exit and discontinue any further changes. If you enter -3 or -5, all listed configuration files will be overwritten with the newer versions. It is therefore very important to first select the configuration files that should not be automatically updated. This is simply a matter of entering the number listed to the left of that configuration file.

As an example, we select the configuration file /etc/pear.conf:

Beginning of differences between /etc/pear.conf and /etc/._cfg0000_pear.conf
[...]
End of differences between /etc/pear.conf and /etc/._cfg0000_pear.conf
1) Replace original with update
2) Delete update, keeping original as is
3) Interactively merge original with update
4) Show differences again

You can now see the differences between the two files. If you believe that the updated configuration file can be used without problems, enter 1. If you believe that the updated configuration file isn't necessary, or doesn't provide any new or useful information, enter 2. If you want to interactively update your current configuration file, enter 3.

There is no point in further elaborating the interactive merging here. For completeness sake, we will list the possible commands you can use while you are interactively merging the two files. You are greeted with two lines (the original one, and the proposed new one) and a prompt at which you can enter one of the following commands:

ed:     Edit then use both versions, each decorated with a header.
eb:     Edit then use both versions.
el:     Edit then use the left version.
er:     Edit then use the right version.
e:      Edit a new version.
l:      Use the left version.
r:      Use the right version.
s:      Silently include common lines.
v:      Verbosely include common lines.
q:      Quit.

When you have finished updating the important configuration files, you can now automatically update all the other configuration files. etc-update will exit if it doesn't find any more updateable configuration files.

4.c. quickpkg

With quickpkg you can create archives of the packages that are already merged on your system. These archives can be used as prebuilt packages. Running quickpkg is straightforward: just add the names of the packages you want to archive.

For instance, to archive curl, orage, and procps:

# quickpkg curl orage procps

The prebuilt packages will be stored in $PKGDIR (/usr/portage/packages/ by default). These packages are placed in $PKGDIR/<category>.

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