Gentoo Policy Guide

Gentoo Policy Guide aims to become a definitive clear source of all Tree Policies that are currently binding to Gentoo developers. It combines both policies that are global by design (i.e. set by the QA team or the Council), as well as specific to other Gentoo projects. The policies are meant to be supplied with rationale and clear indication of the body setting the policy, and therefore the process in which the policy can be updated.

Contents:

• Preface
  • Introduction
  • Authors
  • License
• Motivation and history
  • Historical state of policy documentation
  • Purpose of the Policy Guide
• Basic information
  • Goals of policy making
  • Policy compliance checking
  • Policy enforcement
  • Policy making, changes and appeals
• Other policy documents
  • Gentoo-specific documentation
    • Package Manager Specification
    • GLEPs
    • Developer Manual
  • External standards
    • POSIX
    • FHS
• Editing and publishing updates to this Guide
  • Formatting and style
  • Getting sources
  • Building
  • Sending contributions
  • Merging pull requests
  • Publishing
• Dependencies
  • Optional runtime dependencies
  • =-dependencies with no revision
  • Slot and subslot dependencies
    • on (sub-)slotted packages
    • special case: Qt packages
    • proactive use of slot operators
  • Revision bumps on runtime dependency changes
  • USE dependencies
    • on packages without the flag
• Deprecations
  • Deprecated EAPIs
  • Deprecated eclasses
• Ebuild file format
  • Coding style
  • Code must be contained within ebuild and eclasses
  • HOMEPAGE must not contain variables
  • SRC_URI must not refer to HOMEPAGE
  • KEYWORDS must be defined on a single line
  • LICENSE must not contain variables
  • D must be used only in src_install and pkg_preinst
• File system layout
  • Installation paths
  • Support for separate /usr
  • Strict multilib layout
  • Static libraries and libtool files
  • Game install locations and ownership
  • Absolute symbolic link targets
• Installed files
  • Installation of small files
  • Installation of static libraries
  • Installation of libtool (.la) files
  • Virtuals
  • Installation of manpages
• Keywording and stabilization
  • Rekeywording on dropped keywords
  • Stabilizing new versions
  • Removing stable keywords
• Language-specific policies
  • Python
    • Eclass usage
    • Python 2 deprecation
• Package Maintainers
  • Adding new maintainers
  • New packages without a maintainer
  • Removing package maintainers
• Other metadata variables
  • Dynamic slots (multislot flag)
  • HOMEPAGE value must be meaningful
  • RESTRICT=test for USE=-test
  • LICENSE
• USE flags
  • Versioned USE flags
  • USE=gui flag
  • Underscores in USE flag names
• Users and groups
  • User and group account policy

Indices and tables

• Index

• Search Page

Preface