/etc/portage/profile/package.provided

The /etc/portage/profile/package.provided file can contain a list of packages (one per line) that Portage should assume have been provided. This is useful for porting to non-Linux systems. It is essentially a list that replaces the emerge --inject syntax.

For example, to manage a copy of the 4.0 kernel, Portage can be told that sys-kernel/vanilla-sources-4.0.2 has been installed.

Portage will not attempt to update a package that is listed in /etc/portage/profile/package.provided file unless another package explicitly requires a version that is newer than what has been listed. Dependencies that are satisfied by package.provided entries may cause installed packages satisfying equivalent dependencies to be removed by emerge --depclean actions (see the ACTIONS section of the emerge man page for more information).

Format

• Comments begin with # (no inline comments).
• One DEPEND atom per line.
• Relational operators are not allowed.
• Must include a version.
• USE flags can be set in package.use

Example

FILE /etc/portage/profile/package.providedpackage.provided example

# To take care of the kernel
sys-kernel/vanilla-sources-4.0.2

# To install a special copy of QT
dev-qt/qtcore-5.4.1

# To have modular X but packages want monolithic
x11-base/xorg-x11-7.4-r2

External resources

• https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-1069622.html — Forum talk about drawbacks of package.provided