Re: [gentoo-dev] Some suggestions

[Brian Jackson]

On Saturday 06 September 2003 01:05 pm, David Sankel wrote:
> Hello gentoo developers,
>
>   I would like to say great job to all of you.  Gentoo is an exceptional
> distribution.  I have been using it for about 7 months now.  You all
> should be very proud of yourselves for creating a very solid software
> product.
>
>   I am an independent contractor with several years experience in user
> interaction with software systems.  I came up with a few suggestions for
> the gentoo system.  It is my hope that you will find them interesting or
> informative.
>
> 1)  etc-update changes for a more automated system update
>
> etc-update allows you to automatically update (noted) etc files that one
> never changed from their last emerge.  This could save a lot of
> maintenance time if it was put in a cron job to routinely do that after
> an "emerge sync;emerge -u world"
>   The user then wouldn't have to look at all of the etc files to see
> if they were changed after every "emerge sync; emerge-u world".

been suggested, don't know what the status is, there's probably a bug that's 
tracking the progress

>
> 2)  make.conf updates to be more automated
>
> Most gentoo users, I believe, modify this file.  This specific file changes
> quite often with updates.  Since most users only modify the "USE" and
"CFLAGS"
> components, having an update that is automatic is plausible.  This feature
> is a trade off between the integrity and consistency of the system verses
> end-user maintenance time.
>
> 3) emerge -u world "NOTICE:" output changes.
>
> When doing an "emerge -u world" several "NOTICE:"'s fly by on the screen.
> For many users, they go unread although they contain important information
> in a lot of cases.  If these "NOTICE:"'s are cached and output at the end
> of an "emerge -u world", their readership would have a dramatic increase.
> This would allow interested gentoo users to be more informed of their
> system.

been suggested numerous times, I believe it's being worked on

>
> 4) emerge -u world progress bar option
>
> Most users probably care less about the compilation stages of their update
> in comparison to the percentage of completion.  A progress bar in this
> area would be a nice aesthetic and informative addition for most users.
> In order for this to happen, the output of the "emerge -u world" command
> would probably have to be standardized with some flags to mark the
> beginning and end of a compile.

it's hard to say what progress something is at, this would require some way to 
measure a packages relative size, but we do have an "emerging package x/t" 
message

>
> 5) A simple graphical front end to maintenance commands such as "emerge
> sync", "emerge -u world", and "etc-update".
>
> It would be a nice feature if users didn't have to commit these commands
> to memory for regular maintenance.  The maintenance menu might have an
> icon on all of the default desktops.  If this type of program was
> implemented, it could be prominently displayed and made known for all new
> users.  Perhaps the install documentation could use this tool as much as
> possible.

kind of tough considering the sheer number of desktop environments/window 
managers out there, but I know there is one for kde and one for gnome

>
> 6) A streamlined GUI install.
>
> I'm sure this one has been brought up before.  I consider this the "1.0"
> maker of the gentoo distribution.  In such an installer, I suggest that
> the CFLAGS should not be modified by default.  It has been shown in
> several places that optimizing these does not give a significant enough
> performance increase.  It should stay, of course, as an option though.

being worked on
glis.sf.net
they are doing a scripted backend, that eventually can have whatever kind of 
front end

>
> 7) Emerge -S and Emerge -s speed improvements.
>
> I don't know why these commands perform as slow as they do.  My intuition
> says that they could be an order of magnitude faster.  Perhaps a
> reimplementation in C/C++ or a data format change could help.

also been mentioned on too many occasions to count. portage is not going to be 
rewritten in c/c++, even if it was it wouldn't help, most of the time is i/o. 
there are people working on modularizing the portage code to make it easier 
to change out the backend, so some day you may be able to use a db, sql, 
whatever backend.

>
> Thanks for reading my comments and taking them into consideration.  Again,
> I want to thank you, the gentoo developers, for doing such a great job on
> the gentoo system.  I welcome any thoughts or comments on my suggestions
> in this newsgroup or otherwise.

We always welcome new suggestions, thanks for your input.

--iggy

>
> Sincerely,
>
> David J. Sankel

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