Re: [gentoo-dev] Binary release of gentoo

[Matt Thrailkill]

I would love this.  I've been thinking about this for a while and have been meaning to ask about it on this list.  Reason I'd like it, rather than using Debian?

1) I like portage.
2) I like gentoo.
3) I like using gentoo more than debian, just compiling can be a pain sometimes.

Gentoo is inspired by FreeBSD.  I'd like to see something analagous to all of the pkg_* tools in FreeBSD.  That would simply rock.  Then it'd be practical to put Gentoo on slower systems or systems where you don't need or want to be compiling all the time, like a server.

Biggest problem I see is putting them up for download.  Making them shouldn't be that hard, just require ebuild maintainers to submit a binary pkg built with emerge -b when they submit their .ebuilds.  Require the binaries to be built against the USE flags and CFLAGs from the GRP or something.  I think standardized cflags and use flags are a fair tradeoff for getting binary packages at all.  Might even help QA in a sense, place more inertia and importance on what is selected for the GRP and so on.  If ebuild maintainers have to send in a standardized binary pkg as well, might compel them to craft better ebuilds and so on.

I guess other people use Gentoo solely because it compiles everything, but I don't.  I run it on my desktop and laptop, but forego it on my servers because I don't want to compile so often (and its so bleeding edge, another nice thing would be to have more granularity in choosing which trees to follow, i.e. like -RELENG, -CURRENT, -STABLE in FreeBSD).  There's been times on my laptop when I'm somewhere and I want to try an app like such and such packet sniffer, and I have to sit there and compile for 15 minutes.  Being able to just do `pkg_add -r ethereal` would be a godsend in cases like that.

Some people get all offended and religious when the idea of binaries is suggested, like it would slight the ability to use source packages, but I think they could be made to fit together just like the binary packages and Ports tree under FreeBSD.

If anything, just start off slow and let the maintainers add binary packages for the ebuilds over time.  You see things like openoffice-bin, and alot of people seem to use it, so certainly the utility is there.

Yea, and I'm sending this off now before reading other people's responses because I have to go somewhere soon.  I look forward to reading all that's been said when I come back, hope I don't look retarded for speaking too soon.

On Thu, 10 Apr 2003 00:13:30 +0000
Noah Justin Norris <gentoo@×××××.com> wrote:

> 	Is there any interest to start a binary release of gentoo with precompiled
> binaries. Im talking the entire source tree i know many people that would
> switch to gentoo if they would not have to compile every thing from source .
> not everyone has the fastest computer out there.
>
> 	I would be internested in helping work on a binary port of gentoo. I know
> there would be some issues with having a binary port
> 	1. use settings  ( maybe have 2 versions of apps one clean andone loaded ie
> kde and gnome support)
> 	2. cflags  (maybe support multible processors i586 i686 pentuim3 pentuim4
> etc)
> 	I believe there will be others . i have alot of computers and Im willing to
> help out sence and I have lots of free time
> 	 I know this is possible though I have built packages on one machine and
> installed them on other slower machines.
>
> 	Note > im not talking about a grp like install thats on a cd , but as a new
> edition to the portage ebuild system as a whole  IE: setting in make.conf
> makes emerge get binarys .
>
>
> --
> life is linux
> linux is life
>
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