[gentoo-dev] Re: better support for binary packages

[Duncan]

lxnay@××××××××××××.org posted
fv50wm3klntqyetcw4UYAxe124vaj_firegpg@××××××××××.com, excerpted below, on 
Mon, 25 May 2009 12:16:06 +0200:

> This is what I am doing in Sabayon, creating a new layer over Portage =>
> Entropy. I'm almost done, just need to work out some documentation and
> apidocs. http://gitweb.sabayon.org/?p=entropy.git;a=summary

Agreed.

Gentoo is in general a from-source metadistribution.  There's limited 
support for binary packages in at least one of the package managers 
(portage), but honestly, that's not what Gentoo's best at, and I don't 
believe that will ever change without making it significantly worse at 
what it IS best at now, the normal from-source Gentoo we know and love.

Better to leave the serious distribution level binary repackaging to the 
Gentoo-based distributions like Sabayon.  Let them do what they do best, 
and let Gentoo continue doing what it does best.  By definition, binary 
packaging isn't broken and doesn't need fixed, as that's not part of what 
defines Gentoo, so don't fix what ain't broken! =:^)

That said, I could envision an eselect like "binary profile" switcher, 
that subject to settings in a config file, changes USE flags, CFLAGS, gcc-
configs an appropriate gcc version, etc, changing PKGDIR appropriately as 
well, so one could easily enough create as many "binary profiles" as 
desired and as the use case dictated.  It's likely various reasonably 
large Gentoo deployments are already doing something like this as it 
could certainly be scripted, but an emergable package to make it easy for 
ordinary joe Gentoo user would be useful, and I believe appreciated by 
many.  

(Here, I'd put it to use when testing new gcc versions, making it easy to 
swap out PKGDIRs and revert to the old version either per-package or 
system-wide, if the new version was breaking too much.)

So here:  No to the whole big complicated let's fix Gentoo binaries 
thing.  There's already Gentoo-based binary solutions like Sabayon for 
those so interested, and I can't see Gentoo doing better than they're 
doing, at least not without breaking the from-source that Gentoo's good 
at.  But yes to anyone interested in developing a nice new "binary 
profile" switcher to make managing binary package sets easier for those 
Gentoo admins that would find such a thing useful.  Whether they then 
start making those profiles public and whether anyone else chooses to use 
them is entirely up to the individual admins whose systems would be 
affected.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman