Why so many masked packages?

[moveek]

What's with all these masked ebuilds? I've been trying to merge some programs, and a lot of them are masked. I was trying to merge some image viewing progs but most were masked. Also, of less consequence, I was unable to merge gaim because it is masked too.

In the case of the gnome or kde programs I was thinking they might be masked because I don't have the gnome and kde bases installed, but I assume portage would merge all necessary dependencies, or is that not the case?

One mystery is that I think some of the packages are not masked in package.mask. I remember trying to emerge something, and it was apparently masked, but I couldn't find it in package.mask. Do packages get masked some where else too?

[EzInKy]

I just checked and am emerging gaim as I type. As far as the ones not in your package masks I believe that could have something to do with your ACCEPT_KEYWORDS"~arch" settings for unstable packages.

[rac]

In general, only particular versions of ebuilds are masked. Unless the ebuild in question is completely new, there should generally be a fallback unmasked version.
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[moveek]

I see, thanks rac and EzInky...I thought that all versions of a given package were masked because I would do an emerge --pretend without specifying the version and it would say there were no unmasked ebuilds or something to that effect. Interestingly now I'm not having the problem...actually heheh I think i was trying to do it without being root first.

Inky, how could I change the value of the ACCEPT_KEYWORDS, is it an environment variable?

[EzInKy]

It can be, or you can place it in make.conf. You can do a forum search for ACCEPT_KEYWORDS for more info. The"~" in front of your arch means the package is considered unstable. For example...