How to save work directories? [SOLVED]

Tony0945 · Last edited by Tony0945 on Wed Dec 24, 2008 1:50 am; edited 1 time in total

Sometimes, particularly when emerging an unstable package, I would like to examine the source code to find the source of the bug. My "work" directories seem to be erased after a successful emerge. How do I save them for debugging? Is there a global portage setting or an option to emerge?

yabbadabbadont · Posted: Sat Nov 01, 2008 2:55 am Post subject:

You can use "ebuild package-ebuild-name unpack" to unpack and patch the sources to the /var/tmp/portage tree.

You may have to use the full path to the ebuild file, but I'm sure that you have to use the full ebuild file name including the version.

Genone · Posted: Sat Nov 01, 2008 2:56 am Post subject:

Tony0945

Two methods! Thanks for the prompt help. I'm a gentoo noob, but have embedded programming experience. Maybe I can help with the many ~amd64 packages once I have more experience. I hate pretending that this fine dual-core is an old athlon-xp.

easy target · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 09 Jan 2008 Posts: 134

You may also try to build this package somewhere inside your home directory and test it as a regular user. This way you can check if a bug is gentoo specific (maybe because of a bug in an ebuild) or if it exists even when you build the package yourself.