Portage (software)

Portage is the official package manager for the Linux distribution Gentoo and its derivatives Funtoo, Calculate Linux, as well as Chrome OS.

Portage (implemented in Python and Bash) is inspired by the BSD ports, although it implements certain advanced features not present in the BSD ports: dependency management, fine-tuning of packages at the administrator's discretion, fake installations (at least OpenBSD style), build test environments, safe uninstall, system profiles, virtual packages, configuration file management, and multiple slots for different versions of the same package.

Portage has a local tree that contains the descriptions of the software packages, as well as the scripts needed to install them. This tree can be synchronized with a remote server by means of a command:

emaint -a sync

When a software package is selected to be installed, Portage downloads the source code files and compiles them at that moment, generating the executable files and corresponding documentation. You can specify the optimizations to use in the compilation, as well as use a variable called USE that indicates compatibility with other programs.

The possibility of indicating optimizations and the USE parameter allow you to create a customized distribution. However, Portage also supports the installation of binaries, whether they are packages precompiled by the system itself or packages that are exclusively in binary format.

Portage allows you to keep software up to date and control which versions are installed, providing similar capabilities to Debian's APT (except that APT uses precompiled binaries by default). Thus, for example, it is possible to update all installed packages to the latest stable version without the need for user intervention:

emerge --update @world