properly installing packages without up-to-date ebuilds

[Woody]

Suppose I want to use a cvs version of some package which has an ebuild, but there is no cvs ebuild. How should I go about this? The problem is if I emerge a package that needs it portage thinks I don't have it even though I do, I just didnt get it from portage. Phew... TIA

[drakonite]

You could either make an ebuild for it...
Or you can install the program manually and then inject it into portage.

"emerge --inject <exact-packagename-you-want-portage-to-think-it's-installed>"
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[EtherMage]

Keep in mind that if you do a manual install, you can't UNinstall or do safe unmerge-merge style upgrades or use qpkg or other Portage tools on the resulting program. Injecting will let Portage know it's there so it won't complain about dependencies, but it won't fix any of the rest.

Not that that's terrible - usually "manual" installs get placed in /usr/local, so you know anything there is something not managed by Portage. But it is something you ought to be aware of.

If you want to write your own ebuild, look at the differences between existing CVS vs. non-CVS ebuilds of the same package for inspiration...you ought to be able to manage if you can handle shell scripting.

-EtherMage

PS: Well, technically, IF you keep the source code around or reextract it and re-'configure' with the same settings, SOME packages can do uninstalls via "make uninstall". But that's hardly universal and not something I personally like relying on.

[Woody]

Thanks for the replys, I'll give both options a look. The first place I can think about doing this is for ALSA. There must be some reason why there isnt an alsa-cvs ebuild already? Perhaps it was withdrawn. OTOH a great deal of people require CVS versions of these drivers for newer H/W.