Package Names and Versions

Note

Valid characters are displayed as a regular expression, so that they can be concisely specified while still being exhaustive. Brackets ([]) are part of the regex and are not considered valid characters in any context.

Category Names

A category name may contain any of the characters [A-Za-z0-9+_.-]. It must not begin with a hyphen, a dot or a plus sign.

For consistency, the Naming Guidelines for packages should also be followed for categories.

Package Names

A package name may contain any of the characters [A-Za-z0-9+_-]. It must not begin with a hyphen or a plus sign, and must not end in a hyphen followed by anything matching the Version Syntax.

Also see Naming Guidelines.

Note

A package name does not include the category. The term qualified package name is used where a category/package pair is meant.

USE flag names

A USE flag name may contain any of the characters [A-Za-z0-9+_-]. It must begin with an alphanumeric character.

Underscores should be considered reserved for USE_EXPAND, as described in the USE Expand variables section of the USE flag guide.

Repository Names

A repository name may contain any of the characters [A-Za-z0-9_-]. It must not begin with a hyphen. In addition, every repository name must also be a valid package name.

License Names

A license name may contain any of the characters [A-Za-z0-9+_.-]. It must not begin with a hyphen, a dot or a plus sign.

Keyword names

A keyword name may contain any of the characters [A-Za-z0-9_-]. It must not begin with a hyphen. In contexts where it makes sense to do so, a keyword name may be prefixed by a tilde or a hyphen. In pybuild.Pybuild2.KEYWORDS, -* is also acceptable as a keyword.

Version Syntax

A version starts with the number part, which is in the form [0-9]+(\.[0-9]+)* (an unsigned integer, followed by zero or more dot-prefixed unsigned integers). E.g. 1.2.3

This may optionally be followed by one of [a-z] (a lowercase letter).

This may be followed by zero or more of the suffixes _alpha, _beta, _pre, _rc or _p, each of which may optionally be followed by an unsigned integer. Suffix and integer count as separate version components.

This may optionally be followed by the suffix -r followed immediately by an unsigned integer (the “revision number”). If this suffix is not present, it is assumed to be -r0.

E.g. Using all the components: 1.2.3a_alpha12-r3.

For the version comparison algorithm, see Section 3.3 of the Package Manager Specification.

External Resources

Ignoring slots, Portmod’s version specifiers are identical to Portage’s version specifiers. The following Gentoo resources may be helpful.

Portmod’s package names and versions generally follow Section 3 of the Package Manager Specification, with some exceptions. Excerpts of this section have been copied verbatim and are licensed CC-BY-SA-3.0.