[gentoo-dev] Some suggestions

[David Sankel]

Hello gentoo developers,

  I would like to say great job to all of you.  Gentoo is an exceptional
distribution.  I have been using it for about 7 months now.  You all
should be very proud of yourselves for creating a very solid software
product.

  I am an independent contractor with several years experience in user
interaction with software systems.  I came up with a few suggestions for
the gentoo system.  It is my hope that you will find them interesting or
informative.

1)  etc-update changes for a more automated system update

etc-update allows you to automatically update (noted) etc files that one
never changed from their last emerge.  This could save a lot of 
maintenance time if it was put in a cron job to routinely do that after 
an "emerge sync;emerge -u world"
  The user then wouldn't have to look at all of the etc files to see 
if they were changed after every "emerge sync; emerge-u world".  

2)  make.conf updates to be more automated

Most gentoo users, I believe, modify this file.  This specific file changes
quite often with updates.  Since most users only modify the "USE" and "CFLAGS"
components, having an update that is automatic is plausible.  This feature
is a trade off between the integrity and consistency of the system verses
end-user maintenance time.

3) emerge -u world "NOTICE:" output changes.

When doing an "emerge -u world" several "NOTICE:"'s fly by on the screen. 
For many users, they go unread although they contain important information
in a lot of cases.  If these "NOTICE:"'s are cached and output at the end
of an "emerge -u world", their readership would have a dramatic increase. 
This would allow interested gentoo users to be more informed of their
system.

4) emerge -u world progress bar option

Most users probably care less about the compilation stages of their update
in comparison to the percentage of completion.  A progress bar in this
area would be a nice aesthetic and informative addition for most users. 
In order for this to happen, the output of the "emerge -u world" command
would probably have to be standardized with some flags to mark the
beginning and end of a compile.

5) A simple graphical front end to maintenance commands such as "emerge
sync", "emerge -u world", and "etc-update".

It would be a nice feature if users didn't have to commit these commands
to memory for regular maintenance.  The maintenance menu might have an
icon on all of the default desktops.  If this type of program was
implemented, it could be prominently displayed and made known for all new
users.  Perhaps the install documentation could use this tool as much as
possible.

6) A streamlined GUI install.

I'm sure this one has been brought up before.  I consider this the "1.0"
maker of the gentoo distribution.  In such an installer, I suggest that
the CFLAGS should not be modified by default.  It has been shown in
several places that optimizing these does not give a significant enough
performance increase.  It should stay, of course, as an option though.

7) Emerge -S and Emerge -s speed improvements.

I don't know why these commands perform as slow as they do.  My intuition
says that they could be an order of magnitude faster.  Perhaps a
reimplementation in C/C++ or a data format change could help.

Thanks for reading my comments and taking them into consideration.  Again,
I want to thank you, the gentoo developers, for doing such a great job on
the gentoo system.  I welcome any thoughts or comments on my suggestions
in this newsgroup or otherwise.

Sincerely,

David J. Sankel

camio@×××××.com


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