Gentoo’s package manager Portage has an organizational feature called sets.
A set is essentially a named list of packages that you can use to install
or update multiple packages at once. There are predefined system sets
like @world that contain all packages installed in the system, and it’s
also possible to create custom ones, for example for a specific application.
This is a very useful feature, because it allows users to easily install
uninstall and upgrade packages.
To see all available sets, run:
emerge --list sets
To actually see what’s insie a set, run:
emerge --pretend --verbose @system
Sets are used in the same way as normal package by emerge. To install all packages in a set, run:
emerge --ask --verbose @system
Custom sets can be created by adding a file to /etc/portage/sets/ with
the name of the set and the list of packages to be included. For example
let’s create @dekstop_env set to manage desktop environment packages:
#/etc/portage/sets/dekstop_env
x11-base/xorg-drivers
x11-base/xorg-server
x11-wm/qtile
Furthermore, there are also compound sets, which are sets that contain
other sets. For example, @world is a compound set that contains @system
and @selected sets, and dynamic sets, which are sets that are generated
based on certain criteria, such as matching a specific keyword or USE flag.
For example dev-python/*:openssl includes all packages in dev-python
category that has the openssl USE flag enabled.
With sets installing and upgrading packages becomes very easy becuase
they can be split in categories and managed separately. Some useful
categories might be: @system, @desktop_env, @networking, @office,
@multimedia, @games, @fonts, @development, @virtualization,
@security, @hardware, @misc, @local etc.