All,

> Perhaps this is an argument for a git based portage tree?  Master can
> stay as the current status quo and anyone who wants to can maintain a
> branch or fork which points to a slightly different subset of the tree?
> 

I'm starting to put together a portage/stable server configuration for a large 
number of gentoo VM's that will eventually be hosted on a VMware ESX 4.1U1 
cluster - with the goal of limiting major changes to once/year and otherwise 
only applying security/minimum necessary updates.  I doubt it will be easy but 
I'm doing my best at it :)

As part of that I'm maintaining on github several related repositories, 
including portage mask/use/config files, cluster management utilities, etc.

     https://github.com/deploylinux

I've also started to document work on my blog:

     http://www.deploylinux.net/matt

I'm not currently planning to utilize a separate overlay for packages/ebuilds, 
but it's not out of the question.

I'd be happy to work with any other devs w/ similiar interests or production 
networks to manage.....github makes group development relatively easy.

MattM
-- 
Matthew Marlowe    /  858-400-7430  /    DeployLinux Consulting, Inc
  Professional Linux Hosting and Systems Administration Services
              www.deploylinux.net   *   matt@...
                             'MattM' @ irc.freenode.net