Gentoo masked packages

Masked packages
There are several reasons for the Gentoo developers to place a mask on a package.

For instance:
 * A package may not be entirely tested on your arch.
 * It may not be stable on your arch.
 * It might be buggy together with other packages on your system.

If you want to override the masking of the package, you just have to add a line to a specific file. There are two levels of masked packages.
 * Packages masked with a certain keyword
 * and/or hard masked packages

For a regular x86-system, the keyword would be x86. To unmask all packages with a certain keyword edit. The example will unmask all masked x86 packages.

The easiest way to unmask a specific package, is to add a line using a method like this:

Only use the second method if the package is hard-masked.

You can use specific operands, to control certain versions of a package to be masked/unmasked:
 * = - Use this when specifying a specific package to unmask, like x11-terms/rxvt/rxvt-2.7.10-r2

Masking a package
If you have a package that is unstable on your system you can mask that package by adding it to

The work on this article will continue. /Chris