Re: Facilitating user contributed ebuilds (Was: [gentoo-dev] The future of the Sunrise project)

[james]

On 06/10/2016 08:00 AM, Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
> On Thu, 9 Jun 2016 06:20:38 -0400
> Rich Freeman <rich0@g.o> wrote:
>>> On 08/06/16 16:53, Rich Freeman wrote:
>>>> Do you propose that you can have cross-repo dependencies?
>>> Sure. This works well in Exherbo using Paludis. We could do it
>>> right now if we wanted to.
>>>
>>>> If so that creates a lot of potential issues, even if you do it
>>>> the NixOS way.
>>> You should tell Exherbo and NixOS about all these issues that they
>>> should be having but aren't having.
>>>
>>
>> Perhaps you could explain how they actually prevent the issues I
>> brought up?  Since you didn't actually quote them I'll do so:
>>
>> Suppose you have 10 packages, and they each depend on zlib from a
>> different repository?
>
> They don't. Packages do not depend upon "zlib from repository x". They
> depend upon "zlib".
>
> The Exherbo model is not "packages are all over the place and there is
> no coordination whatsoever". The model is "packages that lots of people
> use are in a small number of core repositories and are carefully dealt
> with to avoid breakages,

Kinda like the @system + selected profile package list?


> but packages that have small numbers of users
> are in personal repositories which everyone can see".

Yes. Right now I use my '/usr/local/portage' for dozens of packages.
Maybe a hybrid of /usr/local/portage (being primary) and the public
repo, when things are ready to share, or to get help on a personal
package ebuild, by making it publically available?


>  Libraries and
> packages that start to be used by many people get moved to one of the
> central repositories; one way to tell that this needs to be done is
> when it looks like the issues you think could happen actually start to
> happen.

And this effort needs a documentation collection to support users, post 
installation to their target (ideal stage-4?) collection of packages; 
many of which they maintain themselves even if a strong-user or dev
helps them assimilate those final packages. Then they can use stage-4
snapshots for periodic backups on complete systems. or for quick 
installs of new systems. (that would super-charge my cluster dev work)!


It just seems to me that we have all of that now, but it is::
1) not organized
2) needs documentation so folks do not have to use irc to ask the same 
questions over and over and over again (gentoo wiki is maturing in this 
direction too, imho.
3) needs (desires) gentoo managed repos, not github

For now, we can use github for users. A glep or 2 can solved 1 and
(2), well I was politely turned down, so suggestions on documentation
to achieve this? Data-mining of emails and irc could easily provide
the first-draft of the docs for need (2).



James