Digby Tarvin wrote:
However after going through the install process, the only sources which I can find in an expected place are the kernel sources.
So the question is, how to I go about making sure that the sources that my system is built from reside on my disk, and how do I find them?
They do reside on your disk; look in /usr/portage/distfiles for the tarballs. The reason you can find the kernel sources in an "expected place" is because /usr/src is the standard place to extract kernel sources, and kernel sources are the only sources that reside in an extracted state on an average system (unless you're manually compiling a source tarball outside of Portage control, in which case you know exactly where the source is extracted anyway).
The sources for portage-compiled apps don't need to be lying around in an extracted state except during the compile (during which they are extracted to /var/temp/portage, I think), but once the compile is finished, the temp files are removed (naturally), though they will remain there if the emerge fails, taking up space. However, the original tarball remains in /usr/portage/distfiles, unless you blow that folder away to save space (which many of us do, since the only downside of that is that you will have to download the tarball again if you want to reinstall that same package/version).
Alternatively, you can just look in the ebuild or at the package description on packages.gentoo.org to find the download location of the tarballs, or the application homepage, and then download the specific sources you want to look at. There's not necessarily a real "reason" to have *all* of the sources on your HDD (other than the ones you specifically want to look at, or preserve for some other reason)-- but, this being Gentoo, it's up to you how you want to handle the issue (keep every source, or keep some, or keep none).
HTH, Holly
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