If you use Gentoo in a wide deployment it can be very useful to make your own overlay. These overlays can add new ebuilds as well as system profiles.

Create the Overlay Repository

mkdir my-overlay ; cd my-overlay
mkdir eclass licenses metadata profiles sets

The Overlay Repository XML file needs to be present, follow this annotated example.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<repositories version="1.0">
<repo priority="50" status="unofficial">
	<name>edoceo-praxis</name>
	<description>Edoceo profile and Packages</description>
	<homepage>http://edoceo.com/praxis</homepage>
	<owner>
		<email>edoceo@gmail.com</email>
		<name>Edoceo, Inc</name>
	</owner>
	<source type="git">git://github.com/edoceo/praxis.git</source>
	<feed>https://github.com/edoceo/praxis/commits/master.atom</feed>
</repo>
</repositories>

This file should be made available in a location that is easy to find and reference but also be available in the repository.

EG: http://edoceo.com/praxis/overlay.xml.

Then, check to make sure that layman can find the overlay properly.

Add this Layout

emerge -av >=app-portage/layman-2.3.0
layman -o http://edoceo.com/praxis/overlay.xml --list
layman -f -o http://edoceo.com/praxis/overlay.xml -a edoceo-praxis

Now add the Metadata Layout into ./metadata/layout.conf.

masters = gentoo
thin-manifests = true

Additional Options

Once all of your systems are pulling and using the same overlay, you can supplement this with an Portage Binhost.

See Also