gentooplz

gentoo please, when you will compile it?

A live terminal dashboard for what Portage is building right now

Features • Requirements • Installation • Usage • How it works

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gentooplz is a ratatui-based TUI that watches /var/tmp/portage and shows, in real time, exactly what emerge is compiling: which package, which build system, how far along it is, and how much CPU/RAM it's actually using no more guessing from a wall of scrolling emerge.log output.

Features

• Live build list - every package currently under /var/tmp/portage/<category>/<pkg-version>/temp/ is detected automatically, no configuration needed.
• Real progress, not guesses - parses ninja/meson/cmake ([123/456]), make ([ 45%]), and cargo (Compiling foo v1.2) output directly from each build's log tail. For plain autotools/make builds that print nothing structured, it falls back to counting source vs. object files on disk.
• Per-package resource usage - matches the process tree behind each build (including short-lived cc1, ld, etc. children) and sums their live CPU% and RSS.
• Queue position - reads /var/log/emerge.log to show progress through the whole merge list (e.g. "3 of 15"), not just what's on disk right now.
• Three focused views - Build (now-building card + CPU history), Log (live tail of the selected package's build log), and Resources (system CPU/RAM/load + full build queue).
• Cheap to run - all disk and /proc scanning happens on a background task; the render loop never blocks on I/O.

Requirements

• Linux with a Gentoo/Portage install.
• Rust 2021 edition (stable toolchain) to build.
• Root privileges to run (see below).

Installation

## Manual
git clone https://github.com/JustRoccat/gentooplz
cd gentooplz
cargo build --release

## Cargo 
cargo install gentooplz

The binary is then available at target/release/gentooplz.

Usage

sudo ./target/release/gentooplz
# or, on systems using doas:
doas ./target/release/gentooplz

CLI flags

Flag	Description	Default
-i, --interval <MS>	Refresh interval for the disk + process scan	1000
-p, --portage-tmp <PATH>	Path to Portage's working directory	/var/tmp/portage
-e, --emerge-log <PATH>	Path to Portage's global emerge log, used for queue position	/var/log/emerge.log
-h, --help	Print help
-V, --version	Print version

Keybinds

Key	Action
↑/k, ↓/j	Move selection between active builds
←/h, →/l, Tab/Shift+Tab	Switch between Build, Log, and Resources views
q, Esc	Quit

How it works

Portage scanner (scanner.rs)  --ScanEvent (mpsc)-->  App (main.rs)  -->  ratatui UI (ui/)
        |
        +-- parser.rs: tail-reads build.log (last 4 KB) + ninja/make/cargo regexes

Each tick, the scanner:

1. Walks /var/tmp/portage for package directories with a temp/ subfolder the marker that emerge is actively working on them.
2. Reads the tail of each build's build.log to detect the build system and progress. If the log hasn't printed anything recognizable yet (e.g. very early in the build, or a build system that stays quiet), it falls back to scanning the build directory itself for marker files (Cargo.toml, build.ninja, Makefile) to still label the build system correctly.
3. Matches running processes (via sysinfo) whose working directory or command line points inside the build directory, then sums CPU/RAM across their whole process trees.
4. Reads the tail of /var/log/emerge.log to resolve the current position in the merge queue.

All of this runs on tokio::task::spawn_blocking, so disk and /proc I/O never stalls the render loop, and updates are pushed to the UI over an mpsc channel.