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Hi All,
To get ready for future improvements to Funtoo, I am adopting a multi-phased approach to 'fix Python'. First step is to address some issues that exist in the Gentoo python eclasses. I've updated these eclasses to be at least somewhat better than they are in Gentoo. These changes will be hitting the tree in an hour or so. For new ebuilds, you can now use the following rather than enumerating every single version of Python:
PYTHON_COMPAT=( python3+ ) Because the minimum version of python3 we support is 3.7, this will ensure that the ebuild will be marked compatible with 3.7 and later versions of Python. Using the '+' symbol is the preferred way to mark ebuilds using PYTHON_COMPAT because it eliminates the time-consuming process used in Gentoo of tagging every single python-using ebuild when a new version of Python comes out. I don't know how they deal with this but it is a lot of wasted energy.
Also supported in the new eclasses are the following:
PYTHON_COMPAT=( python2+ ) # python2_7, python3_7, and beyond PYTHON_COMPAT=( python3_7+ ) # same as python3+ since we start counting at 3_7 PYTHON_COMPAT=( python3_8+ ) # should be self-explanatory... PYTHON_COMPAT=( python3_9+ ) Note that pypy and pypy3 still need to be manually specified, and it is fine to combine as in the usual way:
PYTHON_COMPAT=( python3+ pypy3 ) And another important change I made to the eclass is that any ebuilds still referencing python3_5 or python3_6 will be 'auto-upgraded' to python3_7 compatibility with no user intervention. So this could close a whole slew of bugs. I'm also enabling eclass support for the upcoming Python 3.9.
IMPORTANT FOR ALL USERS: These changes will result in all of your Python-based and Python-using packages being rebuilt. This rebuild is for cosmetic purposes only -- it's due to a weirdness in emerge and the eclasses -- and really is optional and doesn't actually result in any changes except changes to the /var/db/pkg database USE flags. Therefore, these rebuilds can be completed at your convenience as they are not important. More adventurous users may look for ways to write a script to update /var/db/pkg so that these rebuilds are unnecessary -- if you attempt this, please back up /var/db/pkg first and read the following technical note!
TECHNICAL NOTE: Due to how Gentoo implemented the python eclasses, our deprecation of python3_5 and python3_6 in PYTHON_TARGETS will result in some ebuilds going from 'PYTHON_SINGLE_TARGET' mode to just regular 'PYTHON_TARGET' mode. What you will see is that some ebuilds will be turning off python_single_target_python3_7. This is OK. This is just how the eclasses were written by Gentoo -- PYTHON_SINGLE_TARGET is only enabled when there is more than one active implementation of Python in PYTHON_COMPAT. Otherwise it just falls back to using PYTHON_TARGETS.
On another note, our continued use of auto-generation continues to go well with many more packages now in the tree that are auto-generated. Expect this direction to continue.
Best,
Daniel

Please see the following for more info:
Release Notes: https://www.funtoo.org/Release_Notes/1.4-release
Upgrading from 1.3: https://www.funtoo.org/Upgrade_Instructions/1.4-release
Download and Install: https://www.funtoo.org/Install/Introduction

Hi All,
Thanks to funtoo supporters, we now have a new fast download service that is available for everyone. Upgrading to the latest portage-2.3.25_beta2 will enable this service. The fastpull service consists of a lot of different moving parts, but it adds up to distfiles downloading very fast and being available. Here's how it works.
When we regenerate meta-repo and kits, ebuilds are scanned for new SRC_URI tarballs, etc. These new distfiles are queued for download. Our fastpull spider then downloads these distfiles automatically, and uploads them to Google Cloud Storage. When you try to download a SRC_URI, you hit https://fastpull-us.funtoo.org first, which redirects you to the download on fast Google Cloud Storage. The design of fastpull is to ensure that all distfiles are always available going forward. It will also help us to identify situations where for some reason or another we are missing a distfile for download, although these situations should happen less and less frequently (and hopefully disappear) now that fastpull is deployed.
Best,
Daniel Robbins

Hi All, 
I have just committed net-misc/turbovnc to the Funtoo tree. Turbo VNC is a very good VNC (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_Network_Computing) client and server. As a client, it will allow you to connect to remote systems and is very fast and feature-rich, with a ton of security options. As a server, it integrates with X and supports VirtualGL. VirtualGL is functionality that overcomes some inherent limitations of VNC, which traditionally does not support OpenGL or forces applications to use non-hardware rendering. With VirtualGL, you can remotely access a Funtoo system with hardware-accelerated OpenGL and benefit from its GPU (graphics will render on the remote system using hardware acceleration and then the rendered images will be transmitted to your client.) Learn more about VirtualGL here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VirtualGL
As a client, I've found turbovnc to be significantly faster than tigervnc, and the client has a lot of very useful configuration options -- see screenshots below.
Please give the ebuild a try and let me know how it works for you.

Hi All, 
I've just massively reworked the net-misc/dropbox ebuild to provide a much better experience in Funtoo and you should see this showing up in the next few hours. I couldn't get the Gentoo dropbox working reliably. Here is a list of all the changes:
Updated to dropbox-39.4.49.ebuild No longer has an initscript It now sets up ~/.dropbox-dist for each user who sets up dropbox (rather than having a system dropbox install) You don't need to be in the "dropbox" group to use the dropbox nautilus (gnome file browser) extension gnome support is built-in (as long as "gnome" is set in USE, which it is if you are using the GNOME mix-in.) Reworked the python 'dropbox' script to provide a better user experience and be optimal for Funtoo: if you start "dropbox" for the first time from GNOME, it will start a GTK+ installer to set up dropbox for you. if you don't have a GUI, you can still install dropbox The above two features are existing features of dropbox that were somewhat borked in Gentoo. At the end of the setup process, you are given instructions on how to enable dropbox on startup. dropbox command-line tool is also included. Please note that if you have nautilus-dropbox installed, you will need to remove it.
This should result in a really nice experience for dropbox users.
Use as follows:
# emerge dropbox (make sure it's 39.4.49 -- this is the new version.) (as regular user:) $ dropbox start -i This will initialize the ~/.dropbox-dist directory for the user via a command-line or GTK+ interface. Once this is done, dropbox start should be added to your .bash_login and/or .xprofile and can be run immediately to start dropbox in your current session.
Since the ebuild is completely new, the possibility of bugs exist. Please report bugs at https://bugs.funtoo.org . Thanks.
-Daniel

Hi All,
ego-2.2.0 has been released, and is an important update, and will be appearing in meta-repo soon.
New functionality has been added to help you view kit configuration. To view your current kit settings, type:
# ego kit status This will display your current kit settings, as well as their stability level. The stability level is set by Funtoo and lets you know if you are running something we consider 'stable' or not. We recommend that all our users use kits that have a 'prime' stability level. Note that this is different than the kit having 'prime' in its name! When I create a kit, I may call it 1.1-prime if the goal is to make it production-quality, but the moment it is created, it is still considered 'dev' (developers only) status. Type "man ego-kit" for more information on this.
It is now also possible to view a similar listing, but one that displays ALL available kits and their stability levels, by typing:
# ego kit list This new release of ego also includes a host of other improvements, such as improvements to the "ego doc" MediaWiki parser.
Enjoy, Daniel