laymanGunnarWrobelwrobel@gentoo.org2006-2007Gunnar WrobelOverview
Synopsis
Description
Action flags
Other options
Configuration
Overlay lists
Layman cache
Handling make.conf
Handle overlays
List overlays
Searching ebuilds in overlays
Overlay types
Get your overlay published to the world
Examples
Layman files
Reporting bugs
External linksLayman project page on SourceForgeGentoo Overlays projectReferencelaymanSeptember 2007layman1.12006-2007Gunnar Wrobel
This is free software. You may redistribute copies of it
under the terms of the GNU General Public License v2
(http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.html).
layman8layman
manage your local repository of Gentoo overlays
layman-a--addALLoverlaylayman-d--deleteALLoverlaylayman-s--syncALLoverlaylayman-i--infoALLoverlaylayman-S--sync-alllayman-L--listlayman-l--list-locallayman-f--fetchDescriptionlayman is a script that allows you to
add, remove and update Gentoo overlays from a variety of
sources.WARNINGlayman makes it easy to retrieve and
update overlays for Gentoo. In addition it makes it TRIVIAL
to break your system.
The main portage tree provides you with high quality ebuilds
that are all maintained by Gentoo developers. This will not
be the case for most of the overlays you can get by using
layman. Thus you are removing the
security shield that the standard tree provides for
you. You should keep that in mind when installing ebuilds
from an overlay.
To ensure the security of your system you MUST read the
source of the ebuild you are about to install.
OptionsActionsList of possible layman actions.Fetches the remote list of overlays. You will
usually NOT need to explicitly specify this option. The
fetch operation will be performed automatically once you
run the sync, sync-all, or list action. You can prevent
this automatic fetching using the --nofetch option.overlayoverlayAdd the given overlay from the cached remote list to
your locally installed overlays. Specify "ALL" to add
all overlays from the remote list.overlayoverlayRemove the given overlay from your locally installed
overlays. Specify "ALL" to remove all overlaysoverlayoverlayUpdate the specified overlay. Use "ALL" as
parameter to synchronize all overlaysoverlayoverlayDisplay all available information about the specified overlay.Update all overlays. Shortcut for -s ALL.List the contents of the remote list.List the locally installed overlays.Other optionsList of other available layman options.pathpathPath to an alternative configuration file.urlurlSpecifies the location of additional overlay
lists. You can use this flag several times and the
specified URLs will get temporarily appended to the list
of URLs you specified in your config file. You may also
specify local file URLs by prepending the path with
file://. This option
will only append the URL for this specific layman run -
edit your config file to add a URL permanently. So this
is useful for testing purposes.
Prevents layman from
automatically fetching the remote lists of overlays. The
default behavior for layman is to
update all remote lists if you run the sync, list or
fetch operation.Prevents layman from checking
the remote lists of overlays for complete overlay
definitions. The default behavior for layman is to
reject overlays that do not provide a description or a
contact attribute.Makes layman completely quiet.
This option is dangerous: If the processes spawned by
layman when adding or synchronizing overlays require
any input layman will hang without telling you
why. This might happen for example if your overlay
resides in subversion and the SSL certificate of
the server needs acceptance.Makes layman more verbose and
you will receive a description of the overlays you can
download.Remove color codes from the layman
output.LEVELLEVELMakes layman less verbose.
Choose a value between 0 and 4 with 0 being completely
quiet. Once you set this below 3, the same warning as
given for --quiet applies.LEVELLEVELUse this option in combination with
the --add. It will modify the
priority of the added overlay and thus influence the
order of entries in the make.conf file. The lower the
priority, the earlier in the list the entry will be
mentioned. Use a value between 0 and 100. The default
value is 50.Configurationlayman reads configuration parameters
from the file
/etc/layman/layman.cfg by
default. This file provides seven possible settings.Directory that will be used to store the overlays
and all additional data layman
needs. The default is
/usr/portage/local/layman. layman
uses a location within the /usr/portage hierarchy instead
of /var in order to
store its data. This decision has been made to support
network file systems. If you have your portage tree on nfs
or a similar file system and several machines access the
same ebuild repository over the net it will be necessary
to also provide all necessary layman
data within the hierarchy of the tree. This way the
overlays will also have to be synced at one location
only.layman will store the downloaded
global list of overlays here. The default is
%(storage)s/cache.xml.layman will store the list of
installed overlays here. The default is
%(storage)s/overlays.xml.This is the portage configuration file that
layman will modify in order to make
the new overlays available within portage. The default
is %(storage)s/make.conf. You could
also specify /etc/make.conf
directly. But that would mean that you have
an external program trying to automatically set
variables within this very central configuration
file. Since I consider that dangerous I prefer having a
very small external file that only contains the setting
for PORTAGE_OVERLAYS. This file is then sourced at the
end of /etc/make.conf. This is the
reason why layman suggests running
"echo "source
/usr/portage/local/layman/make.conf" >>
/etc/make.conf" after it has been
installed.Specifies the URL for the remote list of all
available overlays. The default is
http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/overlays/layman-global.txt. You
can specify several URLs here (one per line). The
contents will get merged to a single list of
overlays. This allows to add a personal collection of
overlays that are not present in the global list.Specify your proxy in case you have to use
one.Set to "yes" if layman should stop
worrying about overlays with missing a contact address or
the description.Handling overlayslayman intends to provide easy
maintenance of Gentoo overlays while not requiring any
configuration.
Overlay listslayman allows you to fetch an
overlay without the need to modify any configuration
files. In order for this to be possible the script needs an
external list of possible overlay sources. There is a
centralized list available at
but nothing will prevent you from using or publishing your
own list of overlays. The location of the remote lists can
also be modified using the
option when running layman.
To get a new overlay added to the central list provided
for layman, send a mail to
overlays@gentoo.org. Gentoo developers may
add their overlay entries directly into the list which can
be accessed over the CVS repository for the Gentoo
website.
You can also use several lists at the same time. Just
add one URL per line to the overlays variable in your
configuration file. layman will merge the
contents of all lists.
layman also allows you to define
local files in this list. Just make sure you prepend these
path names in standard URL notation
with file://.
If you need to use a proxy for access to the Internet,
you can use the corresponding variable in
the layman configuration file. Layman
will also respect the http_proxy
environment variable in case you set it.
Local cachelayman stores a local copy of the
fetched remote list. It will be stored in
/usr/portage/local/layman/cache.xml
by default. There exists only one such cache file and it
will be overwritten every time you
run layman.
Handling /etc/make.confSince layman is designed to
automatically handle the inclusion of overlays into your
system it needs to be able to modify
the PORTDIR_OVERLAY variable in your
/etc/make.conf file. But
/etc/make.conf is a very central and
essential configuration file for a Gentoo
system. Automatically modifying this file would be
somewhat dangerous. You can
allow layman to do this by setting
the make_conf variable in the
configuration file to /etc/make.conf.
A much safer and in fact recommended solution to the
problem is to let layman handle an
external file that only contains
the PORTDIR_OVERLAY variable and is
sourced within the
standard /etc/make.conf file. Just add the following line to the end of your
/etc/make.conf file:
source /usr/portage/local/layman/make.conf/usr/portage/local/layman/make.conf
is the default provided in the layman
configuration. Change this file name in case you decide to
store it somewhere else.
The file does not necessarily need to exist at the
beginning. If it is missing, layman will create it for you.
There is also no need to remove the
original PORTDIR_OVERLAY variable from
the make.conf file. Layman will simply add new overlays to
this variable and all your old entries will remain in there.
Adding, removing and updating overlaysOnce a remote list of overlays has been fetched,
layman allows to add overlays from the
remote list to your system. The script will try to fetch
the overlay. If this is successful the overlay information
will be copied from the cache to the list of locally
installed overlays. In addition
layman will modify the
PORTDIR_OVERLAY variable to include the
new overlay path.
Removing the overlay with layman will
delete the overlay without leaving any traces behind.
In order to update all overlays managed by
layman you can run the script with the
option or
the flag.
List overlayslayman provides the
and
options to print a list of available respectively
installed overlays.
Listing will prepend all fully supported overlays
with a green asterisk, all non-official overlays with a
yellow asterisk and all overlays that you will not be able
to use since you do not have the necessary tools installed
with a red asterisk.
In the default mode layman will be strict about
listing overlays and only present you with overlays that
are fully supported. In addition it will complain about
overlays that are missing a description field or a contact
attribute. This type of behavior has been added with
layman-1.0.7 and if you'd like to return to the old
behavior you may use the k option flag or set the nocheck
option in the configuration file.
Searching ebuilds in overlays
You can search through the ebuilds available in the
overlays on by
using "eix". Emerge the package and run
update-eix-remote update.
Overlay typesCurrently layman supports overlays that
are exported via rsync,
subversion, bzr,
darcs, git,
mercurial or provided
as tar packages.
Overlay listsOverlay list format
Layman uses a central list of overlays in XML format. The file looks like this:
An example overlay.xml file
<?xml version="1.0" ?>
<layman>
<overlays>
<overlay
type = "svn"
src = "https://mydomain.net/svn/myoverlay/"
contact = "me@mydomain.net"
name = "myoverlay">
<link>
http://mydomain.net/myoverlay
</link>
<description>
Contains some of my ebuilds.
</description>
</overlay>
</overlays>
Adding an overlay locally
Simply create an overlay list in the format described
above and run layman with the
switch. You need to
prepend local file URLs with
file://.
Adding an overlay globally
The global list of overlays used by
layman lies at
http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/overlays/layman-global.txt.
All Gentoo developers have access to this location via CVS
and can modify the list of overlays.
If you are not a Gentoo developer but wish to get your
overlay listed you should contact the Gentoo Overlays team
at overlays@gentoo.org. You can also join
#gentoo-overlays on
irc.freenode.net.
ExamplesInstalling an overlaylayman -f -a wrobelThis would add the overlay with the id
wrobel to your list of installed
overlays.Syncing your overlayslayman -s ALLThis updates all overlaysPerforming several actions at the same timelayman -f -a wrobel -a webapps-experimentalThis fetches the remote list and immediately adds two
overlaysFiles/etc/layman/layman.cfgConfiguration file, holding the defaults for
laymanReporting bugs
Please report bugs you might find at