Common Mistakes

This section contains information on the common mistakes developers make when writing ebuilds.

Invalid use of <c>static</c> use-flag The static use-flag should only be used to make a binary use static linking instead of dynamic linking. It should not be used to make a library install static libraries. The package should always (if possible) install both the dynamic and static libraries.

Referencing the full path to documentation files that could be compressed When printing out to the users where to find files like INSTALL, do not specify the full path since PORTAGE_COMPRESS comes into play. The file could be compressed with gzip, bzip2, or some other random compression tool. So, instead of doing this: elog "They are listed in /usr/share/doc/${PF}/INSTALL.gz" Do something like: elog "They are listed in the INSTALL file in /usr/share/doc/${PF}"