path: root/man/eclean.1

.TH "ECLEAN" "1" "0.4.1" "gentoolkit" ""
.SH "NAME"
eclean \- A cleaning tool for Gentoo distfiles and binary packages.
.SH "SYNOPSIS"
.LP
.B eclean \fR[\fIglobal\-options\fR] ... <\fIactions\fR> \fR[\fIaction\-options\fR] ...
.LP
.B eclean\-dist \fR[\fIglobal\-options, distfiles\-options\fR] ...
.LP
.B eclean\-pkg \fR[\fIglobal\-options, packages\-options\fR] ...
.LP
.B eclean(\-dist,\-pkg) \fR[\fI\-\-help, \-\-version\fR]
.SH "DESCRIPTION"
\fBeclean\fP is small tool to remove obsolete portage sources files and binary packages.
Used on a regular basis, it prevents your DISTDIR and PKGDIR directories to
infinitely grow, while not deleting files which may still be useful.
.PP
By default, eclean will protect all distfiles or binary packages corresponding to some
ebuilds available in the Portage tree.  This is the safest mode, since it will protect
whatever may still be useful, for instance to downgrade a package without downloading
its sources for the second time, or to reinstall a package you unmerge by mistake
without recompiling it.  Sure, it's also a mode in which your DISTDIR and PKGDIR will
stay rather big (although still not growing infinitely).  For the 'distfiles', this
mode is also quite slow because it requires some access to the whole Portage tree.
.PP
If you use the \-\-deep option, eclean will only protect files corresponding to
some currently installed package (taking their exact version into account).  It will
save much more space, while still preserving sources files around for minor revision
bumps, and binaries for reinstallation of corrupted packages.  But it won't keep files
for less usual operations like downgrading or reinstalling an unmerged package.  This
is also the fastest execution mode (big difference for distfiles), and the one used by
most other cleaning scripts around like yacleaner (at least in its version 0.3).
.PP
Somewhere in the middle, adding the \-\-package\-names option when using \-\-deep
will protect files corresponding to all existing versions of installed packages.  It will
allow easy downgrading without recompilation or redownloading in case of trouble, but
won't protect you against package uninstallation.
.PP
In addition to this main modes, some options allow to declare a few special cases file
protection rules:
.IP o
\-\-time\-limit is useful to protect files which are more recent than a given amount of time.
.IP o
\-\-size\-limit (for distfiles only) is useful if you want to protect files bigger than  a given size.
.IP o
\-\-fetch\-restricted (for distfiles only) is useful to protect manually downloaded files.
But it's also very slow (again, it's a reading of the whole Portage tree data)...
.IP o
Finally, you can list some categories or package names to protect in exclusion files (see
\fBEXCLUSION FILES\fP below).
.SH "PARAMETERS"
.SS "Global options"
.TP
\fB\-C, \-\-nocolor\fP				turn off colors on output
.TP
\fB\-d, \-\-deep\fP				only keep the minimum for a reinstallation
.TP
\fB\-e, \-\-exclude\-file=<path>\fP	path to the exclusion file
\fB<path>\fP is the absolute path to the exclusion file you want to use.
When this option is not used, default paths are /etc/eclean/{packages,distfiles}.exclude
(if they exist).  Use /dev/null if you have such a file at it standard location and
you want to temporary ignore it.
.TP
\fB\-i, \-\-interactive\fP          ask confirmation before deleting
.TP
\fB\-n, \-\-package\-names\fP       protect all versions (\-\-deep only)
.TP
\fB\-p, \-\-pretend\fP              only display what would be cleaned
.TP
\fB\-q, \-\-quiet\fP                be as quiet as possible, only display errors
.TP
\fB\-t, \-\-time\-limit=<time>\fP    don't delete files modified since <time>
\fB<time>\fP is an amount of time: "1y" is "one year", "2w" is "two weeks", etc.
.br
Units are: y (years), m (months), w (weeks), d (days) and h (hours).
.TP
\fB\-h, \-\-help\fP                 display the help screen
.TP
\fB\-v, \-\-verbose\fP              display more verbose messages during processing
.TP
\fB\-V, \-\-version\fP              display version information
.SS "Actions"
.TP
\fBdistfiles\fR
Clean files from /usr/portage/distfiles (or whatever else is your DISTDIR in make.conf).
This action should be useful to almost any Gentoo user, we all have to big DISTDIRs sometime...
.br
\fBeclean\-dist\fP is a shortcut to call eclean with the "distfiles" action, for simplified
command\-line.
.TP
\fBpackages\fR
Clean files from /usr/portage/packages (or whatever else is your PKGDIR in make.conf).
This action is in particular useful for people who use the "buildpkg" or "buildsyspkg"
FEATURES flags.
.br
\fBeclean\-pkg\fP is a shortcut to call eclean with the "packages" action, for simplified
command\-line.
.SS "Options for the 'distfiles' action"
.TP
\fB\-f, \-\-fetch\-restricted\fP		protect fetch\-restricted files (\-\-deep only)
.TP
\fB\-s, \-\-size\-limit=<size>\fP	don't delete distfiles bigger than <size>
<size> is a size specification: "10M" is "ten megabytes", "200K" is "two hundreds kilobytes",
etc.
.br
Units are: G, M, K and B.
.SS "Options for the 'packages' action"
.TP
\fB\-i, \-\-ignore\-failure\fP		ignore the failure to locate PKGDIR
This is only useful when scripting to ignore an otherwise fatal error.
.SH "EXCLUSION FILES"
Exclusions files are lists of packages names or categories you want to protect
in particular.  This may be useful to protect more binary packages for some system
related packages for instance.  Syntax is the following:
.IP o
blank lines and lines starting with a "#" (comments) are ignored.
.IP o
only one entry per line is allowed.
.IP o
if a line contains a category name, like "sys\-apps", then all packages from this
category will be protected.  "sys\-apps/*" is also allowed for aesthetic reasons, but
that does NOT mean that wildcard are supported in any way for any other usage.
.IP o
if a line contains a package name ("app\-shells/bash"), then this package will be
protected.  Versioned atoms like ">=app\-shells/bash\-3" are NOT supported.  Also, the
full package name (with category) is mandatory.
.IP o
if a line contains a package name with an exclamation mark in front ("!sys\-apps/portage"),
then this package will be excluded from protection.  This is only useful if the category
itself was protected.
.IP o
for distfiles protection, a line can also be a filename to protect. This is useful if you have
some files which are not registered by the ebuilds, like OpenOffice.org i18n files
("helpcontent_33_unix.tgz" for instance).  Another example are sources you want to protect
that do not have an ebuild in the tree or any currently installed overlays.
.IP o
eclean will also inform you of any unavailable installed packages that are on your system as well
as if it was able to locate the source filename(s) in order to protect them.  If you want to protect
all installed distfile sources, run eclean in pretend mode first.  Then check which sources it was
not able to find the filename(s) for and add entries for them in the distfiles.exclude file before
running eclean again.
.LP
By default, if it exists, /etc/eclean/packages.exclude (resp. distfiles.exclude) will be use
when action is "packages" (resp. "distfiles").  This can be override with the \-\-exclude\-file
option.
.SH "EXAMPLES"
.LP
Clean distfiles only, with per file confirmation prompt:
.br
.B # eclean \-i distfiles
.LP
Check which binary packages could be removed, with a no\-color display:
.br
.B # eclean \-Cp packages
.LP
Clean binary packages of uninstalled packages, but keep all versions of installed ones:
.br
.B # eclean\-pkg \-d \-n
.LP
Clean all distfiles except for installed packages (exact version), those which
are less than one month old, bigger than 50MB, or fetch\-restricted:
.br
.B # eclean\-dist \-d \-t1m \-s50M \-f
.LP
From a crontab, silently clean packages in the safest mode, and then distfiles in deep
mode but protecting files less than a week old, every Sunday at 1am:
.br
.B 0 1 * * sun \ \ eclean \-C \-q packages ; eclean \-C \-q \-d \-t1w distfiles
.SH "NOTE"
.TP
While running and searching distfiles for cleaning, eclean will report any
unavailable packages it finds installed on your system. An unavailable package
is a package that is installed on the system, but there is not a corresponding
ebuild available. Those sources may not be protected if the SRC_URI is not
recorded in the installed package database.  The SRC_URI is no longer recorded
by recent portage/pkgcore versions.
.SH "BUGS"
.".TP
."The policy used to decide if a distfile can be removed or not relies on the
SRC_URI variables ."of ebuilds.  It means that if an ebuild uses files that are
not part of its SRC_URI, eclean will ."probably remove them.  This are ebuilds
bugs, please report them as such on ."http://bugs.gentoo.org.
.".TP
."In safest mode (default, without the \-\-deep option), this script can be very slow.  There
."is not much to do about it without hacking outside of the portage API.
.SH "SEE ALSO"
.TP
The Gentoo forum thread that gave birth to eclean:
.B http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=3011
.TP
The bug report requesting eclean inclusion in gentoolkit:
.B http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33877
.SH "AUTHORS"
Thomas de Grenier de Latour (tgl) <degrenier@easyconnect.fr>
.br
modular re\-write by:
.br
Brian Dolbec (dol\-sen) <brian.dolbec@gmail.com>