Gentoo Archives: gentoo-project

From: hasufell <hasufell@g.o>
To: gentoo-project@l.g.o
Cc: docs-team@g.o
Subject: [gentoo-project] improving alternative PM support in gentoo
Date: Sat, 15 Aug 2015 17:24:21
Message-Id: 55CF75BC.10804@gentoo.org
1 Hi all,
2
3 I would like to improve support for alternative package managers in
4 Gentoo in any way possible and make a few points about why I think this
5 is important and useful. As the most important example right now, I will
6 talk about Paludis.
7
8 Paludis is a multi-format package manager[0] supporting Gentoo and has
9 been around since 2006. Since then, it has been used by Gentoo users and
10 developers.
11
12 Paludis supports all EAPIs and implements PMS[1] consistently. It has
13 been deemed stable on amd64 and x86 last year[2] and generally supports
14 the following architectures: alpha, amd64, arm, ia64, mips, ppc, ppc64,
15 s390, sparc, x86.[3]
16
17 It is also well known for its rich configuration system and the
18 strictness properties of the dependency resolver which is what most
19 people value it for.
20
21 Currently, there are not many support channels for people who combine
22 Gentoo with Paludis (only for both separately). Our main Gentoo support
23 channels are also a bit wary towards Paludis and I am hoping to not only
24 show that it is a very useful package manager, but that it also benefits
25 Gentoo as a meta-distribution to be open towards such innovative approaches.
26
27 My aim would be that all our main support channels like #gentoo, the
28 user mailing lists, the forums and so on treat user discussions
29 regarding alternative package managers in (almost) the same way as Portage.
30
31 That also means that we would have to integrate these alternatives in
32 our documentation, hopefully the official one. Because I think our
33 official documentation should discuss package managers in the same way
34 it discusses file systems. So, it is fine to recommend e.g. Portage and
35 ext4 as the main examples, but we should also mention zfs, btrfs,
36 Paludis, Pkgcore (when it catches up) and so on.
37 In the case of Paludis, the upstream documentation[4] is quite technical
38 and doesn't give a concise enough introduction for Gentoo beginners, who
39 want to follow a step-by-step guide. Because of that, I have written up
40 such a guide and proposed it to be included in the official Gentoo
41 handbook[5][6].
42
43 This could be the start of improving a number of things:
44 * introduce Gentoo beginners to useful PM alternatives
45 * improve support for these in all our main support channels
46 * users don't have to search hours for e.g. Paludis related guides,
47 which are scattered across ancient wikis and forum posts, any more
48 * raise awareness that Gentoo is different (and has a PMS for a reason)
49 * encourage other PMs (like Pkgcore[7]) by promising to treat them as
50 first-class citizens in Gentoo if they are able to support the full PMS
51 * make clear that we care about technology, no matter where it comes from
52
53 What do you guys think about this? Do you see any other things that need
54 to be tackled in order to get there? Maybe create a project for this?
55
56 I think we need to start somewhere and maybe the official documentation
57 is that place, because it is more than just a technical statement. And I
58 think we need such a statement.
59
60
61 [0] http://paludis.exherbo.org/index.html
62 [1] https://dev.gentoo.org/~ulm/pms/head/pms.html
63 [2] https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=520874
64 [3] https://gitweb.gentoo.org/repo/gentoo.git/tree/sys-apps/paludis/paludis-2.4.0.ebuild#n20
65 [4] http://paludis.exherbo.org/configuration/index.html
66 [5] https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=557324
67 [6] https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/User:Hasufell/Test#Alternative:_Configuring_Paludis
68 [7] https://github.com/pkgcore/pkgcore
69
70 --
71 Best regards,
72 Julian Ospald

Replies