An Ebuild is a Python script written for the portage system of Gentoo Linux. Each application in the portage tree has an ebuild written for it, and the ebuild, invoked with "emerge nameofebuild", automatically installs the program and takes care of all dependencies. Ebuild files are usually named as "name-version.ebuild". Usually, the ebuild is designed to install an application from source, although some ebuilds are designed for binaries. Here is an example ebuild for the Mediawiki software:

# Copyright 1999-2003 Gentoo Technologies, Inc.
# Distributed under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License and the GNU General Public License v2
# $Header: /home/cvsroot/gentoo-x86/net-www/mediawiki/mediawiki-20030829 aplank Exp $

DESCRIPTION="The software that runs http://www.wikipedia.org" SRC_URI=http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/wikipedia/${PV} HOMEPAGE="http://wikipedia.sourceforge.net/" LICENSE="GFDL-22"

IUSE="php mysql perl python ocaml" DEPEND="virtual/glibc >=sys-libs/ncurses >=dev-lang/perl >=dev-lang/python >=media-libs/libpng >=sys-libs/readline >=dev-db/mysql ) >=dev-lang/ocaml ) >=dev-libs/libiconv src_unpack() { unpack ${A} epatch ${FILESDIR}/${P}/ emake || die}

External links