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Jesús J. Guerrero Botella posted on Thu, 23 Jun 2011 08:15:44 +0200 as |
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excerpted: |
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> Symlinks are clean, and portage has always been file-oriented so I see |
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> no problem with using them for this. |
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It has been some years since I've seen the argument made, but if I'm not |
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mistaken, at least back in 2004-ish when I first switched to Gentoo, the |
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argument against in-tree symlinking (or multi-hard-linking, for that |
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matter) of any kind (other than the obvious directory hard-linking) was |
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that we wanted to keep the tree at least minimally deployable on non-Unix |
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filesystems like fat/ntfs. Note that while a user's profile uses a |
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symlink, the symlink is on /etc (which is thus implied to be a Unix |
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filesystem with symlinking capacities) pointing /into/ the tree, NOT |
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actually PART OF the tree. |
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One scenario in which this might be a factor is that of someone doing |
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their syncs and source downloads at work where they have lots of |
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bandwidth available, then sneakernetting it home on a fat32 formatted |
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thumbdrive. |
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Now it can be argued that the flexibility benefit of multi-category |
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packages trumps that of being able to put the tree on fat or whatever, |
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but there IS a definite loss of tree portability that's implied, and thus |
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a tradeoff to be considered. |
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|
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-- |
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Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs. |
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"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master -- |
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and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman |
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