[gentoo-dev] Re: [RFC] Rebooting the Installer Project

[Duncan]

Andrew Savchenko posted on Tue, 21 Jul 2015 03:05:04 +0300 as excerpted:

> occasionally I need a tool to "fast install Gentoo and fine-tune it
> later". This happens quite often on a new job box,
> oh during visits where I'm given a workstation and 3-4 hours to set it
> up before doing real work and so on.
>
> The idea is to have binary-based Gentoo ready to work on general common
> hardware with such software out of the box as fully-fledged modern gui
> browsers (chromium, firefox), libreoffice, xterm, screen, vim,
> compilers, ldap support and other dev tools. Set of packages may vary,
> but the idea is that they should work out of the box due to tight
> constrains on initial system configuration (boss should see that I'm
> doing my job at the end of the day).
>
> But afterwards I'd like to tune this setup in a usual Gentoo way:
> configure kernel, USE flags, {C,CXX,F,FC,LD}FLAGS, select proper
> alternatives and so on more or less accordant to the devmanual.

I've never used it myself, but from what I've read, that's pretty much 
what the gentoo-based sabayon linux does.  It's a binary-based distro 
that lists as a major feature (from its homepage):

>>>

Binary vs Source Package Manager

It's up to you whether turn a newly Sabayon installation into a geeky 
Gentoo ~arch system or just camp on the lazy side and enjoy the power of 
our binary, dumbed down Applications Manager (a.k.a. Rigo). With Sabayon 
you are really in control of your system the way you really want.

<<<

[After reading a bit on the sabayon site to satisfy my own curiosity as 
well, something I had been meaning to do anyway...]

When first installed, sabayon has a portage config synced with the sabayon 
build servers, same USE, etc.  The recommendation is to choose either 
entropy, the native sabayon binary package manager, or portage, and stick 
with it, but there's documentation available for "advanced users" who 
want to keep the two in sync and thus be able to use both, or who want to 
switch (presumably from sabayon prebuilt binaries to gentoo build-from-
source) later.  Do note that sabayon is based on gentoo/~amd64, however, 
so switching to stable amd64 will be downgrading.  Also, they use the 
hard-masked-in-gentoo portage-9999 live-build version, so even switching 
to ~amd64 portage will be a (generally minor) downgrade for it.

So a quick sabayon install and update via entropy, followed by an update 
of the portage config (the entropy package updates will have diverged 
from the initially synced state) using the appropriate tool, should leave 
you with a generally current and synced system built from binaries.

That's your working system at end-of-day.

At that point you can switch to portage using the instructions provided, 
review and change any USE flags and other portage settings you wish, and 
do an emerge --newuse --update --deep @system and @world, and the result 
should be basically the same as if you'd done it the conventional gentoo 
way.  The biggest caveat is likely to be if you were targeting stable 
amd64, not ~amd64, since that'd be a downgrade, since sabayon is ~amd64 
based.  But it should be as possible as it is on gentoo, since that's 
essentially what you're left with after the switch to portage, a gentoo 
~amd64 system.


FWIW, this is the big reason I've never been a big booster of either a 
gentoo GUI installer (automating things for mass installation using a 
script is an entirely different thing, tho), or a gentoo binpkg project.  
Gentoo is good at what it does, the stage-3, initial manual install, and 
from-source ebuild scripts and the main tree, and gentoo-based distros 
already provide good binary and GUI-install solutions.  As such, gentoo 
itself trying to do either gui installs or binpkg primary packaging is 
going to be coming late to the game and reinventing wheels other gentoo-
based distros have not only already invented, but are already quite 
expert in.  Let each one keep to its strengths and the whole ecosystem 
will be better for it. =:^)

And while sabayon is apparently currently ~amd64 only, given their 
experience doing a gentoo-based binary distro, I'd suggest that it'd be 
far more efficient to join sabayon and get a build going that targets 
gentoo stable or whatever alternative arch instead of ~amd64, than it 
would be to try to do a full-fledged gentoo-binpkg alternative project.  
Again, let each build on its strengths and together build a bigger and 
stronger community, as a result. =:^)

But like I said, I _do_ believe there's a place for an automated build-
script install solution operating from a pre-made configuration file, to 
automate the mass-install end of things.  To my knowledge, there's no 
existing gentoo-based distro doing that, yet, so it's a hole waiting to 
be filled. =:^)

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman