path: root/src/eclean/eclean.1

.TH "eclean" "1" "0.4.1" "gentoolkit"
.SH "NAME"
eclean \- A cleaning tool for Gentoo distfiles and binary packages.
.SH "SYNOPSIS"
.LP
.B eclean \fR[\fIglobal\-options\fR] ... <\fIactions\fR> \fR[\fIaction\-options\fR] ...
.LP
.B eclean\-dist \fR[\fIglobal\-options, distfiles\-options\fR] ...
.LP
.B eclean\-pkg \fR[\fIglobal\-options, packages\-options\fR] ...
.LP
.B eclean(-dist,-pkg) \fR[\fI\-\-help, \-\-version\fR]
.SH "DESCRIPTION"
\fBeclean\fP is small tool to remove obsolete portage sources files and binary packages.  
Used on a regular basis, it prevents your DISTDIR and PKGDIR directories to 
infinitely grow, while not deleting files which may still be useful.
.PP
By default, eclean will protect all distfiles or binary packages corresponding to some
ebuilds available in the Portage tree.  This is the safest mode, since it will protect
whatever may still be useful, for instance to downgrade a package without downloading
its sources for the second time, or to reinstall a package you unmerge by mistake
without recompiling it.  Sure, it's also a mode in which your DISTDIR and PKGDIR will
stay rather big (although still not growing infinitely).  For the 'distfiles', this
mode is also quit slow mode because it requiries some access to the whole Portage tree.
.PP
If you use the \-\-destructive option, eclean will only protect files corresponding to
some currently installed package (taking their exact version into account).  It will
save much more space, while still preserving sources files around for minor revision
bumps, and binaries for reinstallation of corrupted packages.  But it won't keep files
for less usual operations like downgrading or reinstalling an unmerged package.  This
is also the fastest execution mode (big difference for distfiles), and the one used by
most other cleaning scripts around like yacleaner (at least in its version 0.3).
.PP
Somewhere in the middle, adding the \-\-package\-names option when using \-\-destructive
will protect files corresponding to all existing versions of installed packages.  It will
allow easy downgrading without recompilation or redownloading in case of trouble, but
won't protect you against package uninstallation.
.PP
In addition to this main modes, some options allow to declare a few special cases file 
protection rules:
.IP o
\-\-time-limit is useful to protect files which are more recent than a given amount of time. 
.IP o
\-\-size-limit (for distfiles only) is useful if you want to protect files bigger than  a given size.
.IP o
\-\-fetch-restricted (for distfiles only) is useful to protect manually downloaded files.
But it's also very slow (again, it's a reading of the whole Portage tree data)...
.IP o
Finally, you can list some categories or package names to protect in exclusion files (see
\fBEXCLUSION FILES\fP below).
.SH "PARAMETERS"
.SS "Global options"
.TP
\fB\-C, \-\-nocolor\fP				turn off colors on output
.TP
\fB\-d, \-\-destructive\fP			only keep the minimum for a reinstallation
.TP
\fB\-e, \-\-exclude\-file=<path>\fP	path to the exclusion file
\fB<path>\fP is the absolute path to the exclusion file you want to use.
When this option is not used, default paths are /etc/eclean/{packages,distfiles}.exclude
(if they exist).  Use /dev/null if you have such a file at it standard location and
you want to temporary ignore it.
.TP
\fB\-i, \-\-interactive\fP          ask confirmation before deleting
.TP
\fB\-n, \-\-package\-names\fP       protect all versions (\-\-destructive only)
.TP
\fB\-p, \-\-pretend\fP              only display what would be cleaned
.TP
\fB\-q, \-\-quiet\fP                be as quiet as possible, only display errors
.TP
\fB\-t, \-\-time-limit=<time>\fP    don't delete files modified since <time>
\fB<time>\fP is an amount of time: "1y" is "one year", "2w" is "two weeks", etc.
.br
Units are: y (years), m (months), w (weeks), d (days) and h (hours).
.TP
\fB\-h, \-\-help\fP                 display the help screen
.TP
\fB\-V, \-\-version\fP              display version informations
.SS "Actions"
.TP
\fBdistfiles\fR
Clean files from /usr/portage/distfiles (or whatever else is your DISTDIR in /etc/make.conf).
This action should be useful to almost any Gentoo user, we all have to big DISTDIRs sometime...
.br
\fBeclean\-dist\fP is a shortcut to call eclean with the "distfiles" action, for simplified
command\-line.
.TP
\fBpackages\fR
Clean files from /usr/portage/packages (or whatever else is your PKGDIR in /etc/make.conf).
This action is in particular useful for people who use the "buildpkg" or "buildsyspkg"
FEATURES flags.
.br
\fBeclean\-pkg\fP is a shortcut to call eclean with the "packages" action, for simplified
command\-line.
.SS "Options for the 'distfiles' action"
.TP
\fB\-f, \-\-fetch-restricted\fP		protect fetch-restricted files (\-\-destructive only)
.TP
\fB\-s, \-\-size-limit=<size>\fP	don't delete distfiles bigger than <size>
<size> is a size specification: "10M" is "ten megabytes", "200K" is "two hundreds kilobytes",
etc.
.br
Units are: G, M, K and B.
.SS "Options for the 'packages' action"
.TP
There is no specific option for this action.
.SH "EXCLUSION FILES"
Exclusions files are lists of packages names or categories you want to protect
in particular.  This may be useful to protect more binary packages for some system
related packages for instance.  Syntax is the following:
.IP o
blank lines and lines starting with a "#" (comments) are ignored.
.IP o
only one entry per line is allowed.
.IP o
if a line contains a category name, like "sys\-apps", then all packages from this 
category will be protected.  "sys\-apps/*" is also allowed for aesthetic reasons, but
that does NOT mean that wildcard are supported in any way for any other usage.
.IP o
if a line contains a package name ("app\-shells/bash"), then this package will be
protected.  Versioned atoms like ">=app\-shells/bash\-3" are NOT supported.  Also, the
full package name (with category) is mandatory.
.IP o
if a line contains a package name with an exclamation mark in front ("!sys\-apps/portage"),
then this package will be excluded from protection.  This is only useful if the category 
itself was protected.
.IP o
for distfiles protection, a line can also a filename to protect. This is useful if you have
there some files which are not registered by the ebuilds, like OpenOffice.org i18n files
("helpcontent_33_unix.tgz" for instance).
.LP
By default, if it exists, /etc/eclean/packages.exclude (resp. distfiles.exclude) will be use
when action is "packages" (resp. "distfiles").  This can be overide with the \-\-exclude\-file
option.
.SH "EXAMPLES"
.LP
Clean distfiles only, with per file confirmation prompt:
.br
.B # eclean \-i distfiles
.LP
Check which binary packages could be removed, with a no-color display:
.br
.B # eclean \-Cp packages
.LP
Clean binary packages of uninstalled packages, but keep all versions of installed ones:
.br
.B # eclean-pkg \-d \-n
.LP
Clean all distfiles except for installed packages (exact version), those which
are less than one month old, bigger than 50MB, or fetch-restricted:
.br
.B # eclean-dist \-d \-t1m -s50M -f
.LP
From a crontab, silently clean packages in the safest mode, and then distfiles in destructive
mode but protecting files less than a week old, every sunday at 1am:
.br
.B 0 1 * * sun \ \ eclean \-C \-q packages ; eclean \-C \-q \-d \-t1w distfiles
.".SH "BUGS"
.".TP
."The policy used to decide wether a distfile can be removed or not relies on the SRC_URI variables ."of ebuilds.  It means that if an ebuild uses files that are not part of its SRC_URI, eclean will ."probably remove them.  This are ebuilds bugs, please report them as such on ."http://bugs.gentoo.org. 
.".TP
."In safest mode (default, without the \-\-destructive option), this script can be very slow.  There
."is not much to do about it without hacking outside of the portage API.
.SH "SEE ALSO"
.TP
The Gentoo forum thread that gave birth to eclean:
.B http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=3011
.TP
The bug report requesting eclean inclusion in gentoolkit:
.B http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33877
.TP
Yacleaner, one of the other similar tools:
.B http://blog.tacvbo.net/data/files/yacleaner/
.SH "AUTHORS"
Thomas de Grenier de Latour (tgl) <degrenier@easyconnect.fr>