Re: [gentoo-dev] Moving our/portage stuff to var

[Brian Dolbec]

On Tue, 2012-12-18 at 23:16 -0800, Joshua Saddler wrote:
> On Mon, 17 Dec 2012 11:19:20 +0100
> Tomáš Chvátal <tomas.chvatal@×××××.com> wrote:
>
> > Currently we put portage into /usr/portage and all related stuff is to
> > be in the subfolders there (distfiles, binpkg).
> >
> > I've always myself override these defaults in make.conf to point for
> > /var/portage/ (not /var/lib because I never bothered enough how to
> > make world and config files to be put elsewhere :P).
> >
> > The only reason why we have this currently in usr is that bsd ports
> > put their stuff in there and I suppose Daniel just did the same.
> >
> > With respect to reality how stuff is done in the linux land all the
> > variable data should be in /var so we should adjust and move it in
> > there too.
> >
> > What would you think?
>
> do it. stick it somewhere in /var. i have a small SLC SSD just for /var and
> /usr/portage partitions, since those consistently incur high writes. dropping
> to just one partition for all that i/o would be real nice.
>
> if this proposed change is made, please make sure to contact the GDP. while we
> don't update things like manpages or elog announcements, we would have a ton
> of stuff to fix in gentoo.org/doc/en/ . also, make sure stuff is sorted out on
> the catalyst/releng end well in advance, so users aren't stuck with bad stages.

Yes, Catalyst and the portage defaults will be changed in a co-ordinated
manner.  I've started poking around catalyst, but it has paths
hard-coded nearly everywhere, despite it having passed config variables
around most places.  So, It is going to need code cleanup first.  It
will take me some time to get familiar enough with the code before I
make many changes to clean it up.

For the documentation, primarily the install handbook, perhaps it would
be better to mention both locations, at least mention the old location
so existing and old users won't be thrown for a loop.  It will also need
some attention in the forums where tons of threads will be
referencing /usr/portage.      Perhaps the docs team could start
preparing the docs changes in a manner that will be easy to
search/replace with the final correct locations when that decision is
made.

And YES Diego, it won't be /var/portage or /var/repositories,  we heard
you. 

From my rough tracking, I believe somewhere under /var/cache was
majority vote.  Anyway, once catalyst is ready it will be easy to set it
to whatever is finally decided.
-- 
Brian Dolbec <dolsen@g.o>