Homunculus

I recently converted from Ubuntu to Debian to Sabayon, the latter being a Gentoo-based distribution with support for binary packages. Best of two worlds, I thought.

It really is great, too. Everything works out of the box. Being Gentoo-based, there are always a few hassles until you figure it all out. I’m a former Gentoo user, but it’s been some time since I’ve used it, and I think that most of the errors are due to the binary package manager of Sabayon.

Either way, I’ve been experiencing quite a few file collisions:

* Package 'app-cdr/cdrtools-2.01.01_alpha61' NOT merged due to file
* collisions. If necessary, refer to your elog messages for the whole
* content of the above message.

You can use the environment variable FEATURES=”-collision-protect” to disable collision protection, you can add the variable to your make.conf, you can resolve the collisions manually, or, if you believe in karma, do like I’ve learned:

fruitfucker ~ # COLLISION_IGNORE="/usr" emerge cdrtools -va

With this simple variable, you’ve now chosen to ignore all collisions in /usr. Be aware that this might be fatal, depending on the conflicts. You can use portageq to check collisions manually:

fruitfucker ~ # portageq owners / /usr/include/schily/fnmatch.h
None of the installed packages claim the file(s).

If you’re sure that you have a decent karma rating, i.e. “good” or better, you go ahead and use COLLISION_IGNORE. If you’re not quite sure about your karma status, remember to lean your bicycle against a wall or another solid object (reliance on bicycle stands burns karma), pick up empty plastic shopping bags (trash) and make sure to smile at old people — sometimes they really do deserve it!

Thanks to crox @ crox.net for providing me with this solution: http://blog.crox.net/index.php?url=archives/49-Gentoo-Linux-Package-NOT-merged-due-to-file-collisions-problem-and-solution.html&serendipity[cview]=linear.