Re: [gentoo-dev] Fact Injection (was: Living in a bubble)

[Kumba]

Benjamin Judas wrote:

> --8<------------
> 21:36 <@spb> next step is making paludis the officially supported
> package manager on alpha
> 21:36 <@eroyf> yes
> 21:36 <@eroyf> like it is on mips
> 21:36  * eroyf giggles
> 21:36 <@eroyf> all the mips devs are using it anyways
> 21:37 <@spb> and of course the ultimate aim is to drop alpha keywords
> from portage
> -->8------------

Ya'll don't hear from me very often, usually because for the last 9 months or 
so, I've been pretty apathetic to things that have been going on.  But I keep on 
truckin' because I have this....sense that we're just having a wee little dark 
age.  You know, like that one back in the last millennium where there was 
probably 0 scientific advancement?  Well, we (the world) survived that.  We also 
survived the Cold War.  And by the gods, we're gonna survive Bush too (bloody 
RAID6 bugs....).  That means, Gentoo can survive this this little dark spell 
quite easily.  We won't be the same organization that we were we this all 
started, but well, that's life.  Old blood will be leeched, and new blood 
transfused in.

I've made rumblings about an old Star Wars club I was once in.  They too went 
downhill a bit during my tenure there, and by the time I left, I said: "They 
won't survive another year at this rate.  Decisions take forever, the founder 
barely pays attention, and most of the command staff argues over minor things, 
like rank and title."  That was late 2001, early 2002 when I said that (and when 
I left).  They're still around.  Different people running it, but they're still 
around.

That was like, wow, five years ago almost.  Now if a club made up of people 
loyal to the bad guys in a fictional sci-fi universe can survive as long as they 
have, a distro like Gentoo, with its radical capabilities for adapting to change 
can survive a helluva lot longer.  WAY longer.  All other things are, frankly, 
irrelevant.  They're just the details.




Now why quote that one snippet above?  Simple.  A joke it was; yes.  But since I 
am pretty much the MIPS team these days, I felt it was time once again for me to 
stop talking about pikachus and mudkips, and pikakips and mudchus, and set some 
things straight with regards to this arch.  Some of this reflects my own 
feelings on the matter as well, which I may or may not have shared before.

Namely, number 1, Paludis is _not_ the "official" package manager of the MIPS 
arch.  Right now, Portage *is*, because *that* is what the stages, built by 
Catalyst (on my bloody Octane), have in them.  And unless Catalyst starts 
building stages with Paludis exclusively, that fact will *not* change anytime soon.

I have nothing against Paludis, or even pkgcore, but as I see it, Portage is 
what we build release stages with; it's what a majority of our users use; it's 
what freakin' _defines_ us.  I couldn't care less if some people regard Portage 
as being more broke than Windows Millennium, and that certain alternatives are 
superior.  Portage _is_ Gentoo, and thus, it's what I use.  That's my take on 
the whole matter.

Now with that info out there, this is why I like this PMS thing that spb and 
ciaranm have been working on.  I haven't read more than a few pages of the PDF 
documenting it, but it's top notch stuff, I think.  And it's what we've needed 
for a very long time.

See, I don't see a future where Gentoo only has one "official" package manager. 
  I see a future where Gentoo provides a living database of software, adherent 
to a defined standard; A standard that allows multiple package managers to 
interface with and utilize.  And because this standard exists, if one package 
manager sucks relative to another, then someone with savvy codin' skills can go 
off and fix it.  Or write an entirely new package manager.  In TCL if you want. 
  Or freakin' Visual Basic.  Whatever floats your shredded wheat.

So right now, coming from the mouth (or hands) of the resident MIPS junkie, 
Portage is our official package manager.  And no, not all the mips devs use 
Paludis either.  Probably because I'm the lone guy who sticks to Portage because 
I'm too damn lazy to bother re-learning an entirely new set of commands.  I like 
my emerge, I love my repoman (even if it's a bloody slow thing), and so on.  In 
the future, I hope to have MIPS maybe become the arch that'll be the first to 
support multiple package managers, officially.  And by that, I mean stages for 
portage, paludis, and pkgcore.  Even if it means a dozen stages or more to 
support each one, that's fine (even if I have to write the Catalyst code for 
it).  Because that's what Gentoo is about -- Choice.

Although, I wonder if it's more sane to create some gcc-config-like tool to just 
"switch" between package managers on the fly in a single stage3, irregardless of 
what package manager built that stage.  Now wouldn't freakin' rock a zergling's 
socks?




Anyways, we're off the crab guys.  Really.  We're pulling in blank pots, the 
crew is getting restless, and we're almost out of coffee and nicotine.  Let's 
get our heads on straight, our asses in gear, fill our tanks and get back to 
port so we can get paid and go home.

Don't make me write another mail like this in a few months' time, k?



--Kumba

-- 
Gentoo/MIPS Team Lead

"Such is oft the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world: small hands 
do them because they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere."  --Elrond
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