# arch aur / gentoo overlays



## Alain De Vos (Nov 21, 2019)

Gentoo has the concept of overlays.
It allows to have additional repositories for instance on github.
Could this thing be an interesting thing to have on freebsd ?




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						Layman - Gentoo Wiki
					






					wiki.gentoo.org


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## Shadow53 (Nov 22, 2019)

There actually is something like this, called portshaker. There aren't too many "overlays" (or any up-to-date ones that I know of), but you can use it to make your own. I use it to overlay updated Xorg ports on top of the latest ports tree for use with poudriere.


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## julp (Nov 22, 2019)

As a remainder from /usr/ports/CHANGES:


> 20190903:
> AUTHOR: bapt@FreeBSD.org
> 
> The ports tree now supports overlays
> ...


To say that, now, the ports tree itself offers the base for it (haven't tested myself).


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## drhowarddrfine (Nov 22, 2019)

You mean instead of having a single source of trouble, we can now have 127? That sounds greeaaattt. Very Linux-y! Reminds me of why I never want to use Linux.

Or is there a valid technical reason for doing so where we would gain so much?


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## SirDice (Nov 22, 2019)

drhowarddrfine said:


> Or is there a valid technical reason for doing so where we would gain so much?


The idea here is that you can have a simple repository with just a single port you're working on and don't have to import an entire ports tree in order for the port's dependencies to get resolved.


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## drhowarddrfine (Nov 22, 2019)

Oh. Well. Then...never mind.


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