GentooDepBrowser

GentooDepBrowser is a powerful tool for understanding package dependencies in Gentoo. With its intuitive graphical interface, it allows users to easily browse dependencies by simply clicking on package names. This software is designed and written by Thomas Capricelli and is only useful on a Gentoo system.

Since Python is installed on all Gentoo systems, there is only one remaining dependency required - dev-python/PyQt4, Python bindings for Qt4. GentooDepBrowser uses an internal representation of the entire Portage tree, including both forward and backward dependencies. Unfortunately, Portage still doesn't store and provide this information, but GentooDepBrowser provides a user-friendly solution to this problem.

The creation of this internal representation is quite slow, which is why GentooDepBrowser creates and uses a cache on the disk that is updated when needed, based on the timestamp file stored in Portage metadata dir. This file is updated every time an 'emerge --sync' succeeds.

This latest release fixes some glitches from version 0.9, including an ugly segfault on startup on most platforms. With this release, users can browse up and down through the dependencies, and future releases will provide the same type of meta information as eix/esearch. Overall, GentooDepBrowser is an essential tool for anyone using Gentoo and needing a better understanding of package dependencies.