[gentoo-dev] kick-ass (for me at least) portage idea

[Vadim Berezniker]

This is an idea that is orinted mostly toward hard-core users and maybe 
to some regular users.

The idea is the ability to compile cvs versions of packages. That is for 
example to type 'emerge anjuta-cvs' and to have portage download anjuta 
from CVS, compile it, install it, etc, and record it as 
'anjuta-cvs-###########'(timestamp up to seconds).

The point for this is to allow users to be able to have stuff from CVS 
and yet to be able to have the package manager track that (without 
having to do anything manually). I have yet to come across any package 
manager that can do that.

The problem with this is that the CVS URL for the package is not ebuild 
specific. So you could have abc-1.0.ebuild and abc-1.1.ebuil but they 
would have the same CVS url. So I guess what would be good here is some 
kind of way to have per-'application' specific settings. (Also 
per-applicatin-per-major version) so that you could have a different CVS 
url for abc-1.0 and abc-2.0.

So I guess the idea is to have package-MAJORVERSION.info with common 
settings (without having to source it manually from a ebuild) for that 
major version of the package. (And of course being able to override the 
common settings with a setting in an ebuild.)

The idea does not end here. The user should also be able to type 'emerge 
package-cvs-20021022190412' and have emerge download and install the 
package from CVS from that specific point in time. (using -D cvs flag).
Also the last idea is to be able to go as far as typing 'emerge 
package-cvs-branch-20021022190412' to have it fetch the sources from a 
particular branch'.

(I may have been too paranoid with the timestamp by including seconds.)

Thank You,
Kryptolus

This idea is feasable, but I'm sure can bring its own problems to the table.

So I would like you to consider this idea and express your opinion.