As configuring each single set manually could be quite annoying if you want many sets with the same options Portage also allows to define whole classes of sets in a single section. Like with single sets each section still requires the class option, but to indicate that the section should generate multiple sets it's also necessary to set the multiset option to true. The world-candidate option also supported like with single sets (they'll apply to all sets generated by the section).

As it doesn't make much sense to specify a single name for multiple sets the name option isn't available for multiset sections. Most handler classes will have a reasonable default for generating names, and usually you can (but don't have to) set the name_pattern option to change the naming rules. That option generally has to include a (handler-specific) placeholder that will be replaced with a unique identifier (e.g. for category sets the category name). As with single sets handler classes might require and/or support additional options, these will be discussed later.

Some examples for multiset configurations:

			# generate a set for each file in /etc/portage/sets
			# this section is also in the default configuration
			[user sets]
			class = portage.sets.files.StaticFileSet
			multiset = true
			directory = /etc/portage/sets
			
			# Generate a set for each category that includes all installed packages
			# from that category. The sets will be named <category>/*
			[installed category packages]
			class = portage.sets.dbapi.CategorySet
			multiset = true
			repository = vartree
			name_pattern = $category/*