Re: [gentoo-dev] The problem of stable/current. Was: Re: [gentoo-dev] the vision for Gentoo

[Martin Schlemmer]

On Sun, 2003-06-29 at 00:59, James Yonan wrote:
> Martin Schlemmer <azarah@g.o> said:
>
> > On Sat, 2003-06-28 at 23:31, James Yonan wrote:
> >
> > > Just to throw out an idea on creating a generalization to stable/current (I'm
> > > new to Gentoo, so I'm not sure how much of this has already been done, or to
> > > what extent these ideas have already been made concrete in the portage
> concept).
> > >
> > > Why not create a notion of a distribution "checkpoint"?
> > >
> > > A checkpoint is a file that contains all information necessary to build a
> > > particular gentoo distribution as it existed at some point in time, similar to
> > > the idea of a cvs tag, or saving the game before you do something that's
> > > likely to get you killed :)
> >
> > Unfortunately a big problem with this, is that ebuild do not stick
> > around long enouth ... except of course if you do it your side.
> >
> > IMHO, I do not see that we can do it with current implementation
> > of the portage tree, even if we do not cleanup stuff - as if we
> > do not, the tree is going to get *too* big.
>
> Well, the idea would be to manage the size by having a benchmark portage tree
> and then representing a custom tree inside an .ebuild file by taking the
> benchmark portage tree reference + one or more patch deltas.  The
> "distribution ebuild" file would really not be large, as it would contain
> little more than tags, references, and patches, just as standard ebuild files
> exist today for packages.  Since cvs already manages repository size by
> representing changes as deltas, I doubt a cvs explosion would be likely.  The
> real win with cvs (or other versioning tools) is the way in which tags can be
> locked to constant snapshots of the tree which are invariant over the lifetime
> of the repository.  This constancy is important because it provides a solid
> foundation against which patch deltas can be derived, and would therefore
> allow a particular gentoo snapshot (as represented by a patch against a cvs
> tag) to be accessible indefinitely, leveraging the versioning capability of
> cvs to prevent explosions in size and complexity.
>

Well, sure, if we can do that from where it is migrated from cvs to the 
rsync servers.  We have gone into before, and it will make things too
complex in trying to have one ebuild file, but multiple versions.



-- 

Martin Schlemmer
Gentoo Linux Developer, Desktop/System Team Developer
Cape Town, South Africa