Re: [gentoo-alt] prefix: Keeping old version of portage tree

[X dej]

>> Any ideas on how I somehow gets the same portage tree or another way
>> to solve this problem?

You can set variable SYNC in $EPREFIX/etc/make.conf (and in
bootstrap-prefix.sh) see http://www.linuxsolutions.org/faqs/gentoo/syncing and
https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:Infrastructure/Rsync
This will take the portage tree from another Gentoo installation of your choice.

>> And I guess I should also store the source files somewhere and not get
>> them downloaded, so I don't risk an old version is suddenly not
>> available anymore - is there a way to do that?

99% of sources files stay in $EPREFIX/usr/portage/distfiles ; the 1% others are
git-format, hg-format or others formats; they are related to exotic .ebuilds
only.

>> /<somewhere_global_available>/gentoo-<date>. This way old versions of
>> the software project can be compiled without problems, as all the
>> tools will be the same version.

If you do not care about updating when re-deploying, I would advise you to
backup /<somewhere_global_available>/gentoo-<date> once for each computer, and
to nuke /<somewhere_global_available> then unpack your backup each time you
want a clean Gentoo prefix.

Hope this helps.

2014-07-16 2:06 UTC+02:00, Jacob Godserv <jacobgodserv@×××××.com>:
> The broader subject you're touching on - reproducable Gentoo installations
> - is a problem that Gentoo has attempted to solve with catalyst, and Funtoo
> with metro. They're both barely documented and extraordinarily difficult to
> work with, because they solve a huge number of problems in one go.
>
> You may find that what you're after is a bit harder than you anticipated.
>
> To kick things off, though, I can tell you that keeping a consistent
> portage tree is extremely simple. Just preserve the /usr/portage directory.
> However, this isn't useful without portage itself, and keeping that locked
> to a version means you're going to have to capture the process Gentoo
> Prefix uses to bootstrap a new prefix installation, and inject your own
> source tarballs (instead of the ones that get downloaded by the script).
>
> Some other lurkers here on the mailing list may be able to offer you more
> comprehensive advice, but I thought I'd at least give you what I know while
> you wait.
>
>
> On Tue, Jul 15, 2014 at 2:19 PM, Anders Bo Rasmussen <abr@×××××××.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Hi again.
>>
>> Today I did some more experiments with Gentoo Prefix and I must say
>> that I think it looks very good. Basically I just compiled some
>> different programs ending with gvim, testing that it ran on servers
>> with different Linux distributions and as different users - and it all
>> worked :)
>>
>>
>> The only problem I had was that I need to figure out more about the
>> package system if I want to figure out why I can't have the gtk use
>> flag enabled when I emerge gvim. But that is a minor problem I will
>> look into later.
>>
>>
>> What I want to use Gentoo Prefix for is to make a toolchain for
>> compiling a software project (and at the same time also make a lot of
>> programs available on different servers). My basic idea is to have a
>> script that makes a new version of my Gentoo Prefix installation each
>> time I run it, so it could be placed e.g. at
>> /<somewhere_global_available>/gentoo-<date>. This script or small set
>> of scripts should contain which packages to emerge, changes to
>> make.conf, package.use and other changes that is needed to make an
>> installation. And of course the scripts will be in a VCS. The software
>> project will just point to the version it currently uses at
>> /<somewhere_global_available>/gentoo-<date>. This way old versions of
>> the software project can be compiled without problems, as all the
>> tools will be the same version.
>>
>> What concerns me is that I think I should only update the Portage Tree
>> when I need it. With the method described above I'll get a new version
>> of the Portage Tree each time. That means that I'll not get the same
>> installation if I run my script with 2 weeks in between, which I don't
>> like, as I then can't fix small problems without changing everything.
>>
>> Any ideas on how I somehow gets the same portage tree or another way
>> to solve this problem?
>> And I guess I should also store the source files somewhere and not get
>> them downloaded, so I don't risk an old version is suddenly not
>> available anymore - is there a way to do that?
>>
>> Regards
>>  Anders Bo Rasmussen
>>
>>
>
>
> --
>     Jacob
>