I just finished converting an extra laptop to gnome3. I have not as yet
made any serious use of the resulting system, but thought my experiences
might ease the effort for anyone trying this as well.
I decided on a two step procedure: first convert from x86 to ~x86, and
only then install the gnome3 layman overlay.
The first part was not trivial and I especially appreciated help from
this list and from b.g.o. I have mentioned some of the problems here
before and none were particular to gnome3 so I shall not repeat them.
>From ~x86 (gnome2) to ~x86 (gnome3) was surprisingly easy. Indeed the
only hard part was understanding the language in man (1) portage
concerning /etc/make.profile /etc/portage/make.profile and
/etc/portage/profile.
1. Install the gnome3 overlay.
2. Read /var/lib/layman/gnome3/README, especially
* To try out GNOME 3, use the portage config files in
status/portage-configs. It is recommended to symlink the
package.keywords.gnome3 and package.mask.gnome3 files, and copy
the others to the proper place.
* Read man portage to know the proper place to copy/symlink these
files. In particular, note that
/etc/portage/package.{keywords,mask} can be directories.
3. If you had a single file for /etc/portage/package.keywords
switch to making it a directory and placing your file
inside. I called it
/etc/portage/package.keywords/package.keywords.main-tree
4. Create a symlink for the (supplied) gnome3 keywords
/etc/portage/package.keywords/package.keywords.gnome3 ->
/var/lib/layman/gnome/status/portage-configs/package.keywords.gnome3
[Note: 3 and 4 (keywording) were not needed for me since my system was
~x86, but I did them anyway]
5. Similarly create /etc/portage/package.unmask directory,
put any unmasks you have in there (I had none) and link
/etc/portage/package.unmask/package.unmask.gnome3 ->
/var/lib/layman/gnome/status/portage-configs/package.unmask.gnome3
6. Similarly create directory /etc/portage/profile and then directories
/etc/portage/profile/package.use.mask and
/etc/portage/profile/use.mask
7. Add any use.masks you had to the appropriate directory and link
/etc/portage/profile/package.use.mask/package.use.mask.gnome3 ->
/var/lib/layman/gnome/status/portage-configs/package.use.mask.gnome3
and
/etc/portage/profile/use.mask/use.mask.gnome3 ->
/var/lib/layman/gnome/status/portage-configs/use.mask.gnome3
[5-7 could have had one directory layer fewer since I didn't have
any unmasks or use masks]
8. Emerge update world [evolution failed to compile]
9. revdep-rebuild ["fixes" evolution]
10. reboot
11. smile
kudos to the gentoo gnome team.
allan
