everything inside /var/tmp/portage can be deleted. this is the area where portage builds packages. if everything sompletes cleanly there is usually not too much cruft here, but if an ebuild craps out it can leave a lot of stuff. PS don't do this in the middle of an active ebuild, it will well and truly stop the operation!
/usr/portage/distfiles is the source files that you have downloaded. For packages that have been superceded by a new version you can definitely delete the source file. For current packages there is no difficulty deleting the source package, but if you want to rebuild it you will need to download it again. you may want to rebuild it for any number of reasons, eg if there is an updated ebuild of the same version (eg package-1.4 gets bumped to package-1.4-r1) or if you change your USE flags. If you search the forums there are scripts to intelligently delete older stuff from /usr/portage/distfiles On Thu, 03 Mar 2005 15:04:16 -0700 George Roberts wrote: > Hi all. > > I got my Gentoo system finished a couple weeks ago and since that time > it has grown to over 6 gigs. > I found FINDCRUFT from the forum: > http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=254197&highlight=findcruft. > When I run the script, it outputs a file that is 4.4 megs in size. Most > of which points to my Portage directory. After about an hour of > clicking and deleting, I checked the size of the Portage directory it is > now down 98183 items, totalling 76.7 MB. At this point I came to the > realization that this is not what I bought a computer to spend my time > doing. > > Is there a more reasonable/saner way to maintain my system. > I am wondering is there any places where Portage stashes files that it > has downloaded, or temp files (other than the tmp directory) that could > be safely flushed. > > Thanks in advance. > George > -- > [email protected] mailing list -- Nick Rout Barrister & Solicitor Christchurch <http://www.rout.co.nz> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> -- [email protected] mailing list
