oiledmachine-overlay: Gentoo packages with a news feed for manual fixes

Two commands to add it, one to keep it current

Adding the overlay uses the standard eselect repository machinery rather than a manual clone and sync setup:

emerge app-eselect/eselect-repository
eselect repository add oiledmachine-overlay git https://github.com/orsonteodoro/oiledmachine-overlay.git

Keeping it current is one of two commands. The first syncs every configured repository:

emaint sync -A

The second names this overlay alone, which is what you want when you maintain several:

emaint sync --repo oiledmachine-overlay

That is the entire installation surface. There is no profile modification step, no USE flag documentation on the front page, and no statement about which package mask or keyword combination a given ebuild expects. All of that has to live in the documentation files rather than in the quick start.

News items exist for what a rebuild cannot fix

The overlay uses `eselect news` for a narrow purpose and says so: critical bugs and fixes that cannot be handled by automated means and need manual intervention. Each item is a text file under `metadata/news`. The recent list shows what that means in practice, including a 2026-06-19 item to use split-usr, a 2026-07-01 item covering split-usr users alongside util-linux and others, a 2026-05-14 rebuild of the kernel against 0-day vulnerabilities described as the Fragnesia mitigation, a 2026-05-09 restart of coolercontrold as non-root, a 2026-05-09 rebuild of libpcre2 dependencies, and a 2025-01-16 instruction to rotate passwords immediately. An older entry from 2023-11-05 explains that PGO patch debug output was breaking emerge.

The docs are named after the year they were written

The documentation set is unusual in how it is filed. There are three policy documents named for the year they were written, `2020_POLICY.md`, `2023_POLICY.md` and `2025_POLICY.md`, which implies the rules change and old ones stay readable rather than being overwritten. Alongside them sit focused inventories: `PACKAGE_LIST.md` for what the overlay carries, `SUPPORT_MATRIX.md`, `OVERLAY_COMPARISON.md` against other overlays, `EBUILD_QUALITY.md`, `BROKEN.md` for packages known to fail, `EBUILD_LICENSES.md` for licensing of the ebuilds, `EBUILD_DOCUMENTATION.md` for finding per-package docs, and `EBUILD_PACKAGE_DEVEL_GUIDE.md`. Security policy and contribution rules are the two documents that live at the repository root instead of in `docs/`.

The overlay says it ships AI generated code and data

The most important line in the documentation is an explicit notice: the overlay uses AI generated code and synthetic data in the ebuilds, in the patches and in the documentation. That is stated as fact rather than as a policy debate, and it changes how a reviewer should read a diff. The stated focus areas explain why a general purpose overlay would not cover this ground: appropriate security and performance, game development, what the author calls the AI boom, JavaScript based desktop apps, and legacy hardware support. The name comes from the phrase a well oiled machine, describing a system that runs smoothly under high memory pressure or heavy IO while staying happy.

Sixty top level entries, including a dev-dotnet.old/

The root is organised by Gentoo package category, which makes it readable at a glance. Development categories dominate, with `dev-lang/`, `dev-libs/`, `dev-util/`, `dev-python/`, `dev-cpp/`, `dev-go/`, `dev-java/`, `dev-php/`, `dev-ruby/`, `dev-lua/`, `dev-nodejs/`, `dev-qt/`, `dev-db/`, `dev-build/`, `dev-debug/` and `dev-vcs/`. Application categories run from `app-editors/` and `app-emacs/` to `app-antivirus/`, `app-crypt/` and `app-arch/`. Media and GUI categories sit alongside `games-engines/` and `games-rpg/`, with `gnome-base/` and `gnome-extra/` for the desktop. Two details are worth a second look: `dev-dotnet.old/` is kept beside `dev-dotnet/`, so an obsolete category is still in the tree, and `llvm-core/` and `llvm-runtimes/` are split apart.

Overlay tooling lives at the root without an extension

Five executables sit at the top of the repository and they are the overlay's own machinery. Three have no extension at all: `check-ebuild-update`, `check-ebuild-update-scrapers` and `lintrepo`, alongside `lint-uopts`, with `autobump-patch-versions.sh` being the only one marked as a shell script. The names say what they do. One checks ebuilds for updates and another checks the scrapers themselves, so a broken scraper can be distinguished from a stale ebuild. `lintrepo` lints the overlay, `lint-uopts` handles the -U options namespace, and `autobump-patch-versions.sh` rewrites version numbers inside patches. Shared eclasses live in `eclass/` and license files in `licenses/`, both of which are overlay-wide conventions rather than package categories.

HTML is the primary language and no license is stated

HTML is the language this repository is catalogued under, which fits an overlay whose user-facing content is documentation rather than source, since the packages themselves live in ebuild files. Licensing is the open question. No license file appears among the top level entries, and the repository declares none, while a separate document covers ebuild licenses, which is a different question about the packages it carries rather than about the overlay itself. There are also no GitHub releases, so there is no tagged version to pin. What the metadata does show is a recent commit on 2026-09-30 and an unarchived repository, so the overlay is being worked on even though nothing about its stability is promised.

Editorial conclusion

Add it if you run Gentoo and want game development, legacy hardware and JavaScript desktop packages that your distribution does not carry, and read the support matrix first. Do not adopt it as a production overlay without reading the policy documents and the broken ebuilds list, since the overlay ships AI generated code and states no license of its own.

Frequently asked questions

Official sources

1. Official README
2. Project repository
3. README
4. Releases