Re: [gentoo-dev] possible gentoo convert

[Daniel Robbins]

On Tue, Dec 25, 2001 at 05:46:44PM -0500, George D. Plymale wrote:
> Hi, I've had my eye on Gentoo for some time now.  I am a past Debian
> user and present FreeBSD user.  I've thought about the power of the
> marriage of the two systems and the prospect is rather exciting.  I am
> curious as to whether or not any work has been done in terms of
> downloading the FBSD ports tree Makefiles and the possibility of simply
> using a script to strip BSD Make specific instructions out and
> rebuilding them to fit a linux environment, therefore all of the BSD
> ports would be immediately available to Gentoo users.

The quick answer is that we are not looking into this option.  Our ports
system uses a different and more modular approach than any of the BSDs.
Also, Linux has different file system standards than BSD (FHS), different
system initialization scripts, different required patches, a different
libc, etc etc.  For these reasons, I've never made "freebsd integration"
a priority.  Not to mention the fact that we aren't exactly lacking for
packages.

> I am also curious if there has been any work done in terms of setting up a
> Gentoo cvsup source tree that would allow all Gentoo users to simply run
> something like "make update" in /usr/src to update the entire kernel tree
> instead of having to download kernel packages, which is a terrbily lengthy
> and cumbersome process.  If it would be possible to have a "stable" and
> "current" kernel tree for Gentoo, I think that that would give a great boon
> to the project.

We have a feature called "system profiles" that's integrated into our ports
system.  It allows just that -- different types of systems based out of the
same ports tree.  We can have stable and experimental versions of Gentoo 
Linux, or even "server" and "desktop" variants if we like.  All this 
functionality is available now.

> Also, if some sort of structure were set up to allow "make
> kernconf=MACHINENAME buildkernel && make kernconf=MACHNAME installkernel &&
> make updateworld && make updateports" that would make this even more powerful
> than BSD systems.

I'm working on it and should have a generic complete system updater available
shortly.  Also, I should note that Portage is not based on "make", but uses 
custom python code as its engine.  Doing this gives us a lot more possibilities
and power.

> These things seem rather simple and straight forward and I am not sure if you
> have implemented them, they are in planning or need help doing so and thus
> this e-mail allows me to get a feel for the state that Gentoo is in.

> Thanks much for the Christmas update, which encouraged me to look into this.

You're welcome.  To give you a state for what Gentoo Linux is in, I'll say this.
Our ports system works, and has a lots of nice benefits over FreeBSD's ports.
The only missing part (which should be fixed in a week or so?) is a "make world"-
style upgrade system.  I've been proceeding very slowly in this area because
I want to get it "right".  Our ports system is *much* more modular than BSD;
for example, we don't have a /usr/src and /usr/ports tree.  Everything is in
/usr/portage, and everything is modular, even the base system. 

I'd encourage you to try Gentoo Linux.  I think you'll like it, and as you get
more experience with Portage, you'll figure out where you'd like to contribute.
We already have people working on "non-root" Portage (so packages can be built
as a non-root user), as well as "path sandboxing" (to record/prevent writes
outside a certain specified part of the filesystem while the ports system is
running).  There have also been numerous other user contributions.

Merry Christmas!

-- 
Daniel Robbins                                  <drobbins@g.o>
Chief Architect/President                       http://www.gentoo.org 
Gentoo Technologies, Inc.