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I totally agree. Gentoo is a totally different beast than other |
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distributions, and I think it should stay away from stable, beta, and |
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other types of branches. On the Gentoo home page at |
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http://www.gentoo.org/index-about.html it calls Gentoo a |
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meta-distribution geared toward experienced Linux users and says, |
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"*Portage allows you to set up Gentoo Linux the way you like it*..." and |
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those two statements indicate to me that the developers purposely |
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decided to avoid things like stability levels as found in distributions |
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like Debian. I'm not saying that stability levels are a bad thing, |
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but I don't think it fits in with the philosophy of the Gentoo project. |
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It is probably easy to do things like emerge security updates already. |
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I would be surprised if there isn't already a tool that greps through |
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changelogs and outputs a list of packages corresponding to your |
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system that have new security fixes (or something better). |
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As for stability, I am sure that the developers try very hard to make |
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new versions of core packages work for everyone. However, considering |
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the astronomical number of Gentoo configurations out there, I don't |
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think that most packages could be declared stable for all users. I |
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think that the burden of determining stability is rightly placed on |
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the system administrator who can install it on an identical |
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development system, in a chroot environment, or in UML first. |
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(http://www.gentoo.org/doc/uml.html) Yes this is a big learning curve, |
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but that's why I want to use Gentoo. |
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Because I like the idea of a branchless Gentoo, I would like to ask |
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people for alternative suggestions. What tools or enhancements could be |
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made that would allow us to more easily create our own personalized |
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distributions that are stable, secure, and kept that way through |
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updates? |
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To totally abuse the old story about giving vs. teaching a man to fish: |
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Show a man the location of a decent fish restaurant (like RedFish or |
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Debfish) and he will eat a good fish; but show that man how to catch |
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his own fish (or select one from a local market) and teach him how he can |
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cook it quickly and easily according to his taste and he will live and be |
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thoroughly satisfied. |
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Andrew Shewmaker |
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Pascal Bourguignon wrote: |
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Why do we want a source "distribution" in the first place? |
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While I generally need a rather stable system, I want to have an |
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installation self compiled from the source and keep the sources at |
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hand to be able to trace and debug any application I use when the bug |
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occur. Be it "stable" or "beta" applications. |
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What I mean is that the stability is not a feature that I want to |
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choose at the "distribution" level, but at the package level. |
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... |
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So, if we need to give version numbers to gentoo, it's version numbers |
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identifying the scripts and programs specific to gentoo. The packages |
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and package versions should be indenpendent from gentoo version |
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numbering. |
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... |
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Clearly, I don't see any need to have "branches" in the versioning of |
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gentoo. |
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