Ebuild Revisions

Ebuilds may have a Gentoo revision number associated with them. This is a -rX suffix, where X is an integer — see File Naming Rules. This component must only be used for Gentoo changes, not upstream releases. By default, -r0 is implied.

Ebuilds should have their -rX incremented whenever a change is made which will make a substantial difference to what gets installed by the package — by substantial, we generally mean "something for which many users would want to upgrade". This is usually for bugfixes.

Simple compile fixes do not warrant a revision bump; this is because they do not affect the installed package for users who already managed to compile it. Small documentation fixes are also usually not grounds for a new revision.

When doing a revision bump, the usual rules about dropping to ~arch apply. See Keywording on Upgrades.