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How do I update a package in Gentoo Linux?

Paul
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gustavosiq
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1 Answers1

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This is what you need to read, an intro to portage, the package manager in Gentoo.

To update everything (including dependencies and changes to use flags), then

emerge -avDuN world

To update a single package (again paying attention to dependencies etc):

emerge -avDuN <package-name>

A basic update, without checking for dependency updates would be

emerge -avu <package-name>

The -a means "ask" which is for confirmation, and the -v means "verbose", to give more info about what it is doing.

CaptJak
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Paul
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  • Very good! Thanks a lot Paul! You only forgot of put the upgrade of the Portage before of update of programs: emerge --sync – gustavosiq Nov 20 '11 at 01:55
  • Yeah, but don't, put a file in /etc/cron.daily that does it for you. Syncing takes a long time so is best done overnight. – Paul Nov 20 '11 at 13:09
  • According to gentoo's crontab, cron.daily is ran at 3:01am – Jon Lin Nov 27 '11 at 23:16
  • Dependency check is pretty weird though. I tried update my firefox and it told me I have to update linux-kernel as well. Doesn't look very legitimate to me. – Petr Jan 27 '17 at 15:15
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    @Petr if you use `-D` then it checks the dependency tree for anything that also is due for updating, That doesn't mean FF needs the kernel updating, only that if you want to update everything that has an update ready that FF depends on, that that would include the kernel. – Paul Jan 29 '17 at 12:52