Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: better support for binary packages

[Philipp Riegger]

On Tue, 2009-05-26 at 11:27 +0200, lxnay@××××××××××××.org wrote:
> On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 9:05 AM, Philipp Riegger <lists@××××××××××××.de> wrote:
> > And all this layer thing Fabio was talking about. I did not try it and I
> > did not read the code, but I think it makes things much more
> > complicated. See also the discussion about mixing package managers
> > between Gentoo and Sabayon. I do not want these problems.

> incorrect. Give it a spin ;)

I'll do, if i find the time.

> Problems we have were *only* related to Portage world file handling,
> fixed some time ago. I am sorry to say that the issue reported here
> doesn't seem to be valid. Of course, if you mix both, you need to pay
> attention to not change USE flags (for eg.) that trigger libraries
> compilation, but that's a known binary-world problem.

You're talking about binary-world problems here that Gentoo as a source
based distribution does not have, I assume. This is a strength of Gentoo
and I think we can keep it for binary packages by a good design. If you
emerge a package in Gentoo it gets build from source. If you use a
binary distribution, you cannot influence, what flags were used for
building the package. But with a hybrid approach (I was aming for that
one in my proposal), you would simply have the choice to either install
a binary package and be restricted, if it's not available in the way you
want it, or install it from source. And it would work together, because
you don't have 2 package managers that need to interface, talk, share,
work together, whatever, but you have 1 package manager that does it all
and can keep it consistent.

> I agree with you that there could be some more room for improvements
> here and there (especially in kernel module ebuilds), but with EAPI=2
> we're going in the right direction.

Kernel packages and kernel modules are not really of interest for me. I
would keep them as source packages. My aim is not to make thigns easier,
but to provide the user with the tools to save 8 hours of compiling
openoffice or something like that. Not a binary distribution, but some
kind of -bin packages, just packaged by Gentoo and better.

Philipp