How could I tell portage a package is already installed?

Message

ciges · Post by **ciges** » Mon Sep 25, 2017 10:38 am

Hi

Is there a way to tell portage that a package is already installed? I would like that a package from a dependency not to be installed and the easiest way could be to "pretend" it is already in the system.

Any idea?

Post by **NeddySeagoon** » Mon Sep 25, 2017 10:47 am

ciges,

If its a dependency, it will be needed, your build may fail if the package is not present.
Still, it your Gentoo.

Read about /etc/portage/package.provided in

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man portage

Post by **fedeliallalinea** » Mon Sep 25, 2017 10:48 am

I think that package.provided might be the answer

mv · Post by mv » Mon Sep 25, 2017 12:33 pm

package.provided has many drawbacks.
When I really needed this, I usually either created a dummy package in a local overlay or I have overridden the phases by dummy functions from /etc/protage/env/category/package.

The better alternative is to put the ebuild with the undesired dependency into your local overlay, removing that dependency.

The latter is much better, because if you "pretend" that a package is installed, nothing will warn you if some day you install/upgrade some other package which really needs this package and thus you might get a broken system for a hard-to-find reason.

Genone · Post by **Genone** » Tue Sep 26, 2017 7:58 am

Also "pretending" that a package is installed while it is not can cause build or runtime errors.

Letharion · Post by **Letharion** » Tue Sep 26, 2017 8:30 am

mv wrote:The better alternative is to put the ebuild with the undesired dependency into your local overlay, removing that dependency.

++

LIsLinuxIsSogood · Post by **LIsLinuxIsSogood** » Wed Dec 06, 2017 8:10 am

Sorry to hijack here, but since the question is the same one anyway I want to know how to tell portage the package has been installed, given that it was already from another source. I opened another post but since the package.provided question seems rather less documented. I thought I would check. I too would like to tell Portage that a package is installed, and would like some help to make sure it gets into Portage the right way.

Given the options (would it be easiest) if I don't want to rebuild any packages to just add a list of packages that I have installed from source in my /opt folder. Can the file package.provided actually accept multiple versions (like slots in portage)?

Havin_it · Post by **Havin_it** » Sat Nov 28, 2020 4:05 pm

I just tried using package.provided (first time in many years) and it seems to be ignored. My syntax was just

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sys-auth/libfprint-1.90.1

I also tried prepending '=' as in other package.* files when you specify version, but no dice.

Has this functionality quietly died?

Post by **Ionen** » Sat Nov 28, 2020 4:19 pm

Havin_it wrote:Has this functionality quietly died?

No, it still works. But my guess is that you used /etc/portage/package.provided rather than /etc/portage/profile/package.provided, see the aformentioned wiki link or portage(5) for details.

Havin_it · Post by **Havin_it** » Sat Nov 28, 2020 5:59 pm

Gah! You are quite correct. I actually came from that very page and yet had completely mentally glossed over that extra dir level. There's no helping me but thank you for trying