How to obtain and test development versions of Portage

1.  Access to Portage SVN repositories

The Portage sourcecode is maintained within a SVN repository on the Gentoo SVN server. This server is only accessible for Gentoo developers, for anonymous access see http://anonsvn.gentoo.org/. If you are a dev: The main repository is located at svn+ssh://cvs.gentoo.org/var/svnroot/portage/main, please note that it is subject to strict access controls, only people listed in the developers section on the portage project page are able to commit to it.

The repository currently contains the following branches (incomplete list):

• trunk: the current main development line
• branches/2.1-experimental: the former development line, now abandoned (don't use it unless you want to backport stuff)
• branches/prefix: experimental branch with support for prefix installs
• branches/2.0.54: old stable maintenance branch, nothing happens here anymore
• branches/2.1.2: current stable maintenance branch

2.  Creating snapshots from Portage SVN repositories

svn co svn://anonsvn.gentoo.org/portage/main/trunk
major_version=2.2
prev_release=rc1
latest_rev=$(svn info trunk | grep '^Last Changed Rev:' | grep -o '[0-9]*$')
snapshot_version=${major_version}_${prev_release}_p${latest_rev}
trunk/mkrelease.sh --anon ${snapshot_version}

3.  Testing multiple Portage versions

There are various reasons why you'd want to have multiple versions of portage available at the same time without having to install them as system default. Examples would be to check which versions are affected by a specific bug, to test new features before deploying a new version or have a svn checkout available for testing while keeping a stable release for normal operation.

As of Portage-2.1.2 one can have and use an arbitrary number of Portage installations parallel to each other by adjusting the two environment variables PATH and PYTHONPATH. For example if you have a checkout of the trunk branch at /checkouts/portage/trunk you'd set them like this:

export PYTHONPATH="/checkouts/portage/trunk/pym:${PYTHONPATH}"
export PATH="/checkouts/portage/trunk/bin:${PATH}"

With those settings calling tools like emerge, repoman or ebuild will pickup the correct locations to import libraries. External tools like gentoolkit or porthole may or may not respect those settings though. Setting PATH isn't even necessary if you always call the commands by their full name (e.g. /checkouts/portage/trunk/bin/emerge instead of emerge).

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