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Hi all, |
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there is SoC idea on Gentoo wiki I am interested in. More specifically it's |
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http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/2009_Summer_Of_Code_Ideas#Tree-wide_collision_checking_and_provided_files_database |
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As far as I can understand there are these parts to this project: |
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* use tinderbox to create builds of as much software from portage as possible |
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* create remotely accessible database of files present in every |
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installed package |
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* create web interface for database |
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* create tool that will provide users ability to do various stuff |
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with that database (read-only) |
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By "various stuff" I can think of these use cases: |
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* will this package have any collisions on my system? |
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* what files are in the package (depending on database maybe even |
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depending on USE flags) |
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* how big (aproximately) will be this package once installed? (I'd |
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love to see this implemented some day) |
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* report omissions in database |
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* possibly many more (ideas welcome) |
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I can also imagine QA could do quite a few things with this information. |
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As always there is more than one approach to every part. |
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For first part I can imagine distributed effort of general gentoo |
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users. We could make optional feature in emerge (or other tool) that |
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would send contents of each installed package (together with enabled |
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use flags) to central server. This way we could possibly cover even |
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differences between use flags. If we went down this road however there |
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are quite a few privacy/security questions that would need to be |
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answered. Or maybe I am missing something entirely and this is a |
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braindead stupid idea :-) |
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Lot of problems are of course related to building all the software |
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(possibly on more architectures), sorting out build errors and related |
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stuff. |
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There are million things this infrastructure could be used for, once |
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in place. I am sure most of use cases will pop up only after we |
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implement basic idea. I believe usability of emerge could be improved |
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a bit with this too. |
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Let the brainstorm begin... |
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Stanislav Ochotnicky |
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