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In what form are the packages stored?

April 26, 2017form Packages stored

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In what form are the packages stored?

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Posted

Packages aren’t “stored” per se. Instead, Gentoo provides a set of scripts which can resolve dependencies, fetch source code, and compile a version of the package specifically for your needs. We generally only build binaries for releases and snapshots. The Gentoo Ebuild HOWTO covers the contents of an ebuild script in detail. For full ISO releases, we create a full suite of binary packages in an enhanced .tbz2 format, which is .tar.bz2 compatible with meta-information attached to the end of the file. These can be used to install a working (though not fully optimized) version of the package quickly and efficiently. It is possible to create RPMs (Redhat package manager files) using Gentoo’s Portage, but it is not currently possible to use already existing RPMs to install packages.