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REVDEP-REBUILD

Section: Misc. Reference Manual Pages (1)
Updated: 0.3.3
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NAME

revdep-rebuild - Gentoo: Reverse Dependency Rebuilder

SYNOPSIS

revdep-rebuild [OPTIONS] [--] [EMERGE OPTIONS]

DESCRIPTION

revdep-rebuild scans libraries and binaries for missing shared library dependencies and attempts to fix them by re-emerging those broken binaries and shared libraries. It is useful when an upgraded package breaks other software packages that are dependent upon the upgraded package.

OPTIONS

-C | --nocolor: Turn off colored output. (This option is also passed to portage.)
-d | --debug: Print way too much information (uses bash's set -xv)
-e | --exact: Emerge the most recent version of found packages, without regard to SLOT.
NOTE: This option is not yet implemented in the python version.
-h | --help: Print usage.
-i | --ignore: Delete temporary files from previous runs.
-k | --keep-temp: Force revdep-rebuild not to delete temporary files after it successfully rebuilds packages. This option will NOT prevent revdep-rebuild from deleting inconsistent or out-of-date temporary files.
--library NAME | -L NAME: Search for reverse dependencies for a particular library or group of libraries, rather than every library on the system. This option will unconditionally emerge packages that use the named library. Note: This option is used to force packages using the named library to be rebuilt even if they are not broken. NAME can be a full path to a library or basic regular expression. (See regex(7).)
-l | --no-ld-path: Do not set LD_LIBRARY_PATH. Note: Using this option will cause revdep-rebuild to report some false positives.
-o | --no-order: Do not check the build order against the deep dependency list. This will make revdep-rebuild faster, but it can cause emerge failures. Please try revdep-rebuild without -o before reporting any bugs.
-p | --pretend: Do a dry-run. Do not delete temporary files. (-k -p is redundant, but harmless.) --pretend is assumed when not running revdep-rebuild as root.
-P | --no-progress: Turn off the progress meter
-q | --quiet: Print less output and disable the progress meter. (This option is also passed to portage.)
-u | --search-symbols: Searches for undefined symbols in executibles. This will most likely have false positives in the output, so it is recommended to only use this option with pretend and manually fix any legitimate issues found. Note: This is currently only implemented in revdep-rebuild.sh, it is not implemented in revdep-rebuild.py.
-v | --verbose: More output. (Prints the revdep-rebuild search environment.)
Options after -- are ignored by revdep-rebuild and passed directly to emerge.

CONFIGURATION

revdep-rebuild no longer uses hardcoded paths. To change the default behavior the following variables can be changed by the user.

LD_LIBRARY_MASK - Mask of specially evaluated libraries

SEARCH_DIRS - List of directories to search for executables and libraries

SEARCH_DIRS_MASK - List of directories to not search

You can prepend to these variables by setting the variable in your environment prior to execution, by placing an entry in make.conf, or by placing a file in /etc/revdep-rebuild containing the appropriate variables.

The variables are read and set in the following order:

environment settings - one time changes by user
make.conf - persistent changes by user
/etc/revdep-rebuild/* - persistent changes by ebuild authors

While a user can edit and modify the files in the /etc/revdep-rebuild directory, please be aware that the /etc/revdep-rebuild directory is not under configuration protection and files can be removed and/or overwritten by an ebuild. To change this add /etc/revdep-rebuild to the CONFIG_PROTECT variable in make.conf.

An entry of "-*" means to clear the variable from that point forward. Example: SEARCH_DIRS="/usr/bin -*" will set SEARCH_DIRS to contain only /usr/bin

REVDEP_REBUILD_DEFAULT_OPTS - List of default emerge options for revdep-rebuild

The REVDEP_REBUILD_DEFAULT_OPTS variable can be used to override EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS for revdep-rebuild. This variable replaces the values of EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS and can still be overridden by command line options. Please note that this variable is only for options to pass to emerge and not options for revdep-rebuild itself.

revdep-rebuild honors the NOCOLOR and PORTAGE_NICENESS variables from make.conf

EXAMPLES

It is recommended that when running revdep-rebuild that the following command be used initially:
revdep-rebuild --ignore --pretend

To search the entire system, while excluding /mnt and /home:
env SEARCH_DIRS="/ -*" SEARCH_DIRS_MASK="/mnt /home" revdep-rebuild

To rebuild packages that depend on libkdecore.so.4 from KDE 3.3:
revdep-rebuild --library /usr/kde/3.3/lib/libkdecore.so.4

To rebuild packages that depend upon libImlib.so and libImlib2.so:
revdep-rebuild --library libImlib[2]*.so.*

FILES

revdep-rebuild keeps several pseudo-temporary files in /var/cache/revdep-rebuild/. Deleting these files can improve accuracy at the cost of speed:

0_env.rr: Contains environment variables
1_files.rr: Contains a list of files to search
2_ldpath.rr: Contains the LDPATH
3_broken.rr: Contains the list of broken files
3_errors.rr: Contains the ldd error output
4_raw.rr: Contains the raw list of packages
4_owners.rr: Contains the file owners
4_pkgs.rr: Contains the unsorted bare package names
4_ebuilds.rr: Contains the unsorted atoms
5_order.rr: Contains the sorted atoms
6_status.rr: Contains the ldd error output

EXIT STATUS

revdep-rebuild returns a zero exit status if it and emerge succeeds, and a nonzero exit status otherwise.

BUGS

Report bugs to <http://bugs.gentoo.org>. Please do not report emerge failures caused by -o or -e. Please include your files from /var/cache/revdep-rebuild/, your emerge --info, and patches. ;)