emerge --sync to regenerate the cache. After a portage update, rsync users may find it convenient to run
emerge --metadata to rebuild the cache as portage does at the end of a sync operation.
--search (-s)
Searches for matches of the supplied string in the portage tree. The --search string is a regular expression. For example, emerge --search "^kde" searches for any package that starts with "kde"; emerge --search "gcc$" searches for any package that ends with "gcc"; emerge --search "office" searches for any package that contains the word "office". If you want to search the package descriptions as well, use the --searchdesc option.
--sync
Initiates a portage tree update with one of the rsync.gentoo.org mirrors. Note that any changes you have made to the portage tree will be erased. Except for special circumstances, this uses rsync to do the update. See make.conf(5)'s description of PORTDIR_OVERLAY for a method to avoid deletions.
--unmerge (-C)
WARNING: This action can remove important packages! Removes all matching packages. This does no checking of dependencies, so it may remove packages necessary for the proper operation of your system. Its arguments can be ebuilds, classes, or dependencies -- see --clean above for examples.
--config
Run package specific actions needed to be executed after the emerge process has completed. This usually entails configuration file setup or other similar setups that the user may wish to run.
OPTIONS
- --ask (-a)
- Before performing the merge, display what ebuilds and tbz2s will be installed, in the same format as when using --pretend; then ask whether to continue with the merge or abort. Using --ask is more efficient than using --pretend and then executing the same command without --pretend, as dependencies will only need to be calculated once.
- --buildpkg (-b)
- Tells emerge to build binary packages for all ebuilds processed in addition to actually merging the packages. Useful for maintainers or if you administrate multiple Gentoo Linux systems (build once, emerge tbz2s everywhere). The package will be created in the ${PKGDIR}/All directory. An alternative for already-merged packages is to use quickpkg which creates a tbz2 from the live filesystem.
- --buildpkgonly (-B)
- Creates binary packages for all ebuilds processed without actually merging the packages. This comes with the caveat that all build-time dependencies must already be emerged on the system.
- --changelog (-l)
- Use this in conjunction with the --pretend action. This will show the ChangeLog entries for all the packages that will be upgraded.
- --columns
- Used alongside --pretend to cause the package name, new version, and old version to be displayed in an aligned format for easy cut-n-paste.
- --debug (-d)
- Tells emerge to run the emerge command in --debug mode. In this mode the bash build environment will run with the -x option, causing it to output verbose debugging information to stdout. --debug is great for finding bash syntax errors.
- --deep (-D)
- When used in conjunction with --update, this flag forces emerge to consider the entire dependency tree of packages, instead of checking only the immediate dependencies of the packages. As an example, this catches updates in libraries that are not directly listed in the dependencies of a package.
- --emptytree (-e)
- Virtually tweaks the tree of installed packages to contain nothing. This is great to use together with --pretend. This makes it possible for developers to get a complete overview of the entire dependency tree of a certain package.
- --fetchonly (-f)
- Instead of doing any package building, just perform fetches for all packages (the main package as well as all dependencies).
- --fetch-all-uri (-F)
- Instead of doing any package building, just perform fetches for all packages (the main package as well as all dependencies), grabbing all potential files.
- --getbinpkg (-g)
- Using the server and location defined in PORTAGE_BINHOST (see make.conf(5)), portage will download the information from each binary package found and it will use that information to help build the dependency list. This option implies -k. (Use -gK for binary-only merging.)
- --getbinpkgonly (-G)
- This option is identical to -g, as above, except it will not use ANY information from the local machine. All binaries will be downloaded from the remote server without consulting packages existing in the local packages directory.
- --help (-h)
- Displays help information for emerge. Adding one of the additional arguments listed above will give you more specific help information on that subject. The internal emerge help documentation is updated more frequently than this man page; check it out if you are having problems that this man page does not help resolve.
- --newuse (-N)
- Tells emerge to include installed packages where USE flags have changed since compilation. An asterisk marks when a USE flag has changed since the package was compiled.
- --noconfmem
- Causes portage to disregard merge records indicating that a config file inside of a CONFIG_PROTECT directory has been merged already. Portage will normally merge those files only once to prevent the user from dealing with the same config multiple times. This flag will cause the file to always be merged.
- --nodeps (-O)
- Merges specified packages without merging any dependencies. Note that the build may fail if the dependencies aren't satisfied.
- --noreplace (-n)