| 1 |
Ciaran McCreesh wrote: |
| 2 |
> I think you're massively underestimating the requirements of the |
| 3 |
> average user, what with the tree as complex as it is these days. Most |
| 4 |
> users now: |
| 5 |
> |
| 6 |
> * Have to use external repositories |
| 7 |
> * Have to handle at least some keywording overrides themselves |
| 8 |
> * Have to have some way of managing huge metapackages |
| 9 |
> * Have closer to a thousand than a hundred installed packages |
| 10 |
> * Aren't involved in development work |
| 11 |
> * Expect their systems to work |
| 12 |
> |
| 13 |
> These are very different use cases than those for which Portage was |
| 14 |
> designed. |
| 15 |
> |
| 16 |
Well ... am I an "average Gentoo user?" I'm certainly an *experienced* |
| 17 |
one. I've got a modus operandi that works for me and what I want to do |
| 18 |
with Gentoo, which is essentially run cutting edge but usable (by me) |
| 19 |
scientific and algorithmic composition and synthesis workstations. So |
| 20 |
what I have on my systems is mostly "~x86", lots of local USE flags |
| 21 |
enabled in /etc/make.conf, a "package.use" that turns on "doc" on things |
| 22 |
when I want the documentation installed, and a fair number of other |
| 23 |
things built from upstream source. So |
| 24 |
|
| 25 |
1. I use external repositories, mostly for things that aren't in |
| 26 |
Portage. In almost all cases I download them as source directly from |
| 27 |
their home page. |
| 28 |
2. I'm not sure what "keywording over-rides" are. I do occasionally put |
| 29 |
something in "package.mask" that refuses to compile, but in general |
| 30 |
everything on my boxes is ~x86 and I've never gotten a system so broken |
| 31 |
that I couldn't fix it without a re-install. |
| 32 |
3. I'm not sure what "managing huge metapackages" means ... I don't |
| 33 |
recall having to do that. |
| 34 |
4. $ esearch -FInv ^|grep ^\*|wc -l |
| 35 |
540 |
| 36 |
$ |
| 37 |
|
| 38 |
Yeah, on a log scale, that's closer to 1000 than it is to 100. :) |
| 39 |
5. I'm not really involved in much development work except a lot of |
| 40 |
testing. The projects I'm building on my own are mostly very simple |
| 41 |
things. But I certainly wouldn't say "I'm not a developer". |
| 42 |
6. I expect my systems to break and I expect to be able to unbreak them |
| 43 |
myself when they do. For the most part, they would work for someone who |
| 44 |
just wanted to surf the web, send and receive email and edit documents |
| 45 |
in AbiWord or OpenOffice.org. |
| 46 |
|
| 47 |
So ... am I an "average Gentoo user?" |
| 48 |
|
| 49 |
|
| 50 |
-- |
| 51 |
gentoo-dev@g.o mailing list |
Archives