Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: New install isos needed

[Rich Freeman]

On Sun, Mar 24, 2013 at 5:05 AM, Duncan <1i5t5.duncan@×××.net> wrote:
> I've wondered for years why gentoo invests all that effort into creating
> its own install media, when there's many dedicated projects out there
> whose whole purpose is live install/rescue media.

Tend to agree.  I'd focus more on keeping stage3s up-to-date.  After
we perform fairly significant system package changes (the kind that
involve news items) there is a tendency for stage3s to take even weeks
on some occasions to get updated.  That means that the first
experience of a new Gentoo user is to get to do a udev migration,
resolve blocks, read news items, or whatever.

Ideally these big changes should be coordinated with releng, but maybe
that isn't realistic.  Our stage3s should still catch up reasonably
quickly.

I haven't run my gentoo bootstrap scripts, but as of a few weeks ago
the x86 one was still having to manually uninstall module-init-tools.
That may be fixed now, but in general it has been my observation that
automated builds of complex Gentoo systems (kde, gnome with desktop
profiles) tend to fail more often than not due to one problem or
another.  Ideally it should just involve setting the appropriate
profile and emerging the appropriate meta-package.  In practice you
have to set a few USE flags as well (which for whatever reason the
profile doesn't set).  However, much of the time you end up having to
fix missed dep keywords, blockers, etc.  I do try to log these issues
when I spot them, but haven't generally done this if the issue is
simply that the stage3 is a few weeks old (I don't mind doing that,
but I suspect it won't really be anything releng isn't already aware
of).

For an educational experience unpack a stage3 in a chroot and try to
emerge kde or gnome.  Then try it again two weeks later.  This is what
our new users experience.

Rich