On Sat, May 14, 2011 at 3:51 AM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com>wrote:

> Apparently, though unproven, at 12:31 on Saturday 14 May 2011, Alan
> Mackenzie
> did opine thusly:
>
> > Hi, Gentoo.
> >
> > Two questions about Portage whose ansers I haven't found in the fine
> > manuals:
> >
> > 1. Where is it specified what is in "system" in the same way that
> > "world" is in the file /var/lib/portage/world?
>
> That is defined in your system profile, not by you.
>
> /etc/make.profile is a symlink to something in $PORTDIR/profiles/ and that
>

Odd.  Not on my system, it's not.  It's a directory with two  entries:
  eapi: a text file, length 2, with contents "2\n".
  parent: a text file with two lines:
     ..
     ../../../../../../targets/desktop/kde
The parent is obviously not relative to the /etc/make.profile directory.
Portage works,
pretty much, although I have an unbuildable essential package at the moment
with a bug just filed.  Eix says my portage is 2.1.9.42.

defines the profile you are using. A profile is nothing more than a bunch of
> files that define what your basic system consists of - things like minimum
> packages to install, things that must not be installed, starting point for
> USE
> flags, etc etc.
>
[snippage]

> --
> alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
>
> --
Kevin O'Gorman, PhD