Some feature requests for portage

peterjc123 · n00b Joined: 29 May 2025 Posts: 2

Hello everyone,
I started using Gentoo last year and have had a great experience so far. As I've continued to use it, I feel there are a few areas where Portage could be further optimized:

1. Masking Non-Binary Updates for Specific Packages
Could we have a way to mask non-binary updates for certain packages? For instance, with qtwebengine, using a binary package would significantly cut down on compile time. It would be very useful to have the option to prevent Portage from attempting a source compile for a new version of a package if a binary alternative is available or preferred.

2. Parallel Download/Installation Acceleration for Binary Packages
With Gentoo embracing binary packages, compile times have drastically improved. However, compared to distributions like Arch Linux, the time spent downloading packages is still quite long. It would be beneficial to see parallel download and installation acceleration for binary packages to further reduce update times.

3. Proxy Variable Handling with getuto
When binary repositories are enabled, Portage automatically invokes getuto. However, getuto doesn't seem to read proxy-related environment variables from make.conf, such as http_proxy and https_proxy. This means that users behind a proxy have to manually configure getuto separately, which can be inconvenient. It would be ideal if getuto could automatically honor proxy settings defined in make.conf.

Thank you for considering these points!

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Thu May 29, 2025 11:41 am Post subject:

peterjc123,

Welcome to Gentoo.

1. Is already an old bug. Its not been implemented yet.
Meanwhile, use the -k or -g option to emerge, depending on the location of your binary repo,
See

logrusx · Advocate Joined: 22 Feb 2018 Posts: 3033

Hello,

As Neddy already answered, there's work already been going on on 1), although I'm not sure about the scope of it. Also inform yourself about the difference between -g, -k and their capital counterparts. Also -f.

On 3):

peterjc123 · n00b Joined: 29 May 2025 Posts: 2

Thanks for the prompt answers. Yeah, for (1), it is exactly https://bugs.gentoo.org/924772. For (3), I guess I don't want to completely turn it off, it would be helpful if the environment variables can also be set from the portage side. Should I open a issue at https://github.com/projg2/getuto or bugs.gentoo.org ? For (2), well, in my humble opinion, I guess it should be okay since we are using mirrors and there's no much differences for the mirror maintainers because it is just only one Linux distro and there 're just plenty of them with binary packages. What's more, even if we keep using sequential download, it seems the installation process can be speedup by better design. (e.g. Group the download tasks together) I can open a bug report for that if you want.

logrusx · Advocate Joined: 22 Feb 2018 Posts: 3033