Unlike other Portage configuration files sets.conf
uses Pythons ConfigParser module, which implements
the syntax usually found in .ini files. At its core it allows various
named sections that each can contain any number of key-value pairs, see
the Python documentation
for the full details.
In a sets.conf file, a section can define either a
single package set, or a complete class of sets. These cases are handled
in different ways, and will be explained in detail in the following sections.
The configuration of a single set can be very simple as in most cases
it only requires a single option class to be
complete [1].
That option defines which handler class should be used to
create the set. Other universal options available for single sets are:
name (which is usually not needed as the name
of the set is generated from the section name if name
is missing)
world-candidate, which determines if
given package should be added to the world set
Some handler classes might require additional options for their configuration, these will be covered later in this chapter.
Here are a few examples for single sets taken from the default configuration file:
# The classic world set [world] class = portage.sets.base.DummyPackageSet packages = @selected @system # The selected-packages set [selected-packages] class = portage.sets.files.WorldSelectedPackagesSet # The classic system set [system] class = portage.sets.profiles.PackagesSystemSet
[1] Technically the class option
isn't strictly required, but it should always be used as the default
handler might be changed in future versions.