Re: [gentoo-server] portage sync -> partial ?

On Thu, Feb 19, 2004 at 08:38:46AM +0100, Martin Hajduch wrote:
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> | Performance problems don't always need databases as the answer.
> |
> | The current portage hierarchy contains a huge number of little files
> | with correlated data scattered all over the place.
>
> by the way; does everybody need the complete portage tree ?
> my servers will never run X, games, etc ....
> due to sec updates my portage mirror is syncing every two days
> but i would be fine just to sync the packages which i have/need
>
> well, i could actually modify my rsync command but it would be good to
> have some (minimal) support in portage;
> for example to have locally stored&updated compressed list of
> directories and if something is missing (something what IS in portage)
> then it would fetch it, etc ...
>

I'm not sure this is a good idea to have a 'minimal' tree.
What might be a cool feature would be an 'exclude directories'
rsync even has a command line parameter for this and I believe portage
actually uses it to not sync certain directories.

> i'm nor sure about the details -> is it even possible ? ... it's just
> an idea ...
>
> the question is, how many users have at least 1/3 of all the packages
> installed
> i don't have, even on my home workstation where i do have X and gnome ...
> i don't know if it is exact, but my /var/tmp/portage shows 709 packages
>

I agree I dont' need X/KDE/GNOME for my servers so maybe this 'ignore
directory' flag would be something to investigate ?

I think making peoples choices for them about what packages they
should have isn't a great idea.  Giving them the choice to customize
their portage tree is a much better solution.