TL;DR
Gentoo published a year-end review covering developer additions, repository activity, infrastructure upgrades and a number of packaging and tooling changes. Key items include EAPI 9 completion, a planned mirror move toward Codeberg, new binary/stage images (including RISC-V and WSL), and several packaging and bootstrap improvements.
What happened
In its 2025 roundup Gentoo reported steady development activity, new contributors, and a range of technical updates. The tree comprises 31,663 ebuilds for 19,174 packages; amd64 mirrors hold about 89 GB of binary packages and the project builds 154 distinct installation stages weekly. Commit volume stayed high though slightly lower than 2024; external contributor activity continues. Four new developers joined during the year. Major distribution-wide changes include finalizing EAPI 9 and Portage support, exploring migration of repository mirrors and pull requests to Codeberg, and continuing the financial migration to Software in the Public Interest (SPI). Platform work delivered RISC-V QCOW2 images and weekly WSL images, while support for musl locales was added. Package-level changes ranged from a GPG alternatives mechanism and zlib-ng compatibility to a rework of NGINX packaging, a C++-based Rust bootstrap route, and an experimental system-wide jobserver implementation called steve.
Why it matters
- EAPI 9 and Portage updates change how ebuilds can declare defaults and handle build environments, affecting package maintenance.
- Providing binary stages, WSL images and RISC-V QCOW2 images lowers the barrier to deploying Gentoo on more platforms.
- The GPG alternatives mechanism and zlib-ng support improve flexibility for distributions and users handling cryptography and compression stacks.
- Global jobserver support and improved bootstrapping reduce dependence on prebuilt binaries and can speed up parallel builds across the system.
- A planned mirror migration off GitHub reflects broader concerns about repository hosting and tooling that may influence workflow and contributor onboarding.
Key facts
- Total ebuilds: 31,663 for 19,174 distinct packages.
- Amd64 binary packages available on mirrors: ~89 GB.
- Weekly builds: 154 distinct installation stages for various architectures/configurations.
- Commits to ::gentoo decreased slightly from 123,942 (2024) to 112,927 (2025); external contributors made 9,396 commits across 377 unique authors.
- GURU repository commits fell to 5,813 in 2025 from 7,517 in 2024, while contributors to GURU rose from 241 to 264.
- Bug reports created: 20,763 in 2025 (down from 26,123 in 2024); resolved bugs: 22,395 (down from 25,946).
- Four developers joined in 2025: Jay Faulkner (jayf), Michael Mair-Keimberger (mm1ke), Alexander Puck Neuwirth (apn-pucky), and Jaco Kroon (jkroon).
- EAPI 9 finalized with features including pipestatus, edo, cleaner build environments, and profile-level default EAPI support.
- New or improved items: Codeberg mirror planning, RISC-V bootable QCOW2 images, weekly WSL images, musl-locales enabled in musl stages, GPG alternatives, zlib-ng compatibility, steve jobserver, NGINX packaging rework, C++-based Rust bootstrap (mrustc), FlexiBLAS adoption.
- Finances (fiscal year ending 2025/06/30): Gentoo Foundation income $12,066; SPI receipts $8,471; expenses included program services $8,332 and total bank balance $104,831 as of July 1, 2025.
What to watch next
- Progress and timeline of the planned mirror and pull-request transition to Codeberg (not confirmed in the source).
- Availability of Gentoo in the Microsoft Store for WSL images — project intends to publish there but a date is not provided.
- Completion of the SPI migration for financial operations and whether recurring donors have moved payments (not confirmed in the source).
- Uptake and stability of the experimental global jobserver ('steve') across large-scale parallel builds (not confirmed in the source).
Quick glossary
- EAPI: EAPI (Ebuild API) is the specification that defines functions, variables and behavior ebuilds may use to build and install packages in Gentoo.
- Portage: Portage is Gentoo's package management system, responsible for fetching, building and installing software from ebuilds.
- QCOW2: QCOW2 is a disk image format commonly used by QEMU and other virtualization tools; it supports features like snapshots and compression.
- Jobserver: A jobserver coordinates and limits parallel build jobs so multiple build clients can share a global concurrency budget without oversubscribing resources.
- Bootstrap: In compiler/toolchain contexts, bootstrapping refers to the process of building a tool from simpler or pre-existing components so it can compile itself or other software.
Reader FAQ
Has Gentoo moved its repositories off GitHub?
Gentoo is planning and considering migrating repository mirrors and pull-request contributions to Codeberg due to concerns about forced Copilot usage; the primary git and infrastructure remain self-hosted.
Are there ready-made Gentoo images for RISC-V and WSL?
Yes. The project publishes bootable RISC-V QCOW2 images (rv64gc, lp64d) and weekly WSL images based on amd64 stages; WSL images are not yet in the Microsoft Store.
Did Gentoo drop support for hppa and sparc?
Stable keywords were removed for hppa and sparc because of lack of available hardware; both architectures remain supported with testing keywords.
What changed with GnuPG support?
Gentoo added an alternatives mechanism letting users choose among providers (GnuPG, FreePG fork/patchset, and Sequoia-PGP/Chameleon), though Sequoia compatibility may still present issues.
2025 in retrospect & happy new year 2026! Jan 5, 2026 Happy New Year 2026! Once again, a lot has happened in Gentoo over the past months. New developers, more…
Sources
- Gentoo Linux 2025 Review
- Gentoo Linux Made Progress On RISC-V, WSL & More In …
- News – [LWN.net] Gentoo looks back on 2025
- Gentoo Linux 2025 Retrospective: A Year of Strategic …
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