When I upgraded the workstation to 2.5 I wound up breaking the Eric3 IDE that I use for all my hacking (Python and otherwise). It was broken because of some Python 2.5 HeapTypeObject structure changes that meant the SIP wrapper generator wouldn't work. A search of the net revealed what appeared to be an ebuild with an explicit patch to build my current version of SIP checked in a month ago. So, thinks I, let's just sync and update.

But after I finished syncing, no such patch exists in the ebuild directory. What?! thinks I, how is that possible, it's a Gentoo site... oh, "overlays.gentoo.org", this must be some sort of community collection of overlays to portage. Sure enough, it is; these are not-yet-integrated overlays by developers/working groups.

Of course, I create overlays all the time when I'm porting or developing a package, so the documentation that suggested I use a tool called "layman" to manage my overlay set just gave me the creeps. Instead I just browsed to the indivdual developer's overlay wiki and did the following:

mcfletch@raistlin:~/portagedev/dev-python$ svn co http://overlays.gentoo.org/svn/dev/nelchael/dev-python/sip sip

Then ran ebuild digest (just in case) for the updated version's ebuild and built the SIP wrapper. Yay overlays (and thanks nelchael, whoever you are)!

Now to build PyQt and Eric and get to work.

[update]
But PyQt also needs Python2.5 changes, currently only available as prerelease snapshots... so having to create new overlays now... and it turns out this version is dependant on a different version of SIP. Bah. Guess I'll just have to work on the laptop. I have to get started with paying work!