SELinux Policy EAPI 8 Migration - 26/04/2026 00:00 GMT

What Changed
============

The SELinux policy packages have all been bumped to EAPI 8.

POLICY_TYPES, which used to be an environment variable, is now a USE
expand named SELINUX_POLICY_TYPES. The use of USE_EXPAND fixes some
longstanding bugs and allows users to switch policy types more easily.

Whilst the POLICY_TYPES environment variable is considered deprecated
going forward, it is still necessary to keep it set (and in sync with
SELINUX_POLICY_TYPES) until you are certain that all installed policy
packages on your system have been updated.

Please read on for further instructions.

For Users
=========
Set SELINUX_POLICY_TYPES in your package.use to match what POLICY_TYPES
is currently set to. To get the current value of POLICY_TYPES:

$ portageq envvar POLICY_TYPES

And to set SELINUX_POLICY_TYPES:

# echo 'SELINUX_POLICY_TYPES="mcs"' >>/etc/portage/make.conf

OR

# echo "sec-policy/* SELINUX_POLICY_TYPES: mcs" >>/etc/portage/package.use/selinux-policy

Then, update the system to install the updated policy packages:

# emerge --verbose --ask --update --deep --newuse @world

DO NOT unset POLICY_TYPES until you are certain that all of the policy
packages installed have been updated to use EAPI 8 (or above). You can
use this command to find all outdated installed policy packages that
have not been updated yet:

$ qgrep -eNJ 'EAPI="\?7"\?' 'sec-policy/*'

If the above command returns an empty list, then it is safe to remove
the POLICY_TYPES variable.

For Overlay Maintainers
=======================
In your SELinux policy packages, bump the EAPI variable to EAPI=8. If
your packages have any form of dependency on another policy package,
it is neccessary to constrain their USE flags with the new eclass
variable SELINUX_POLICY_USEDEP. See selinux-policy-2.eclass(5) for more
details.