Re: [gentoo-user] Open Question: The feasibility of a complete portage binhost

[Sam Bishop]

On 21 January 2015 at 22:44, Rich Freeman <rich0@g.o> wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 21, 2015 at 9:00 AM, Sam Bishop <sam@××××××.email> wrote:
>>
>> I don't see why it can't be all the combinations, the issue is
>> storage, and the storage costs could be a lot lower than expected
>> given how hard it is to guess.
>
> I don't believe that binpkg filenames contain the use flag settings,
> and I'm not sure that given multiple copies of a binpkg with different
> filenames portage goes through them and figures out which ones are
> which.  This isn't an area I have looked into seriously.  However, it
> obviously would be a blocker for getting what you propose to work,
> even theoretically.
>

I'll quote from the binpkg docs:
>> Next to these, portage will check if the binary package is built using the same USE flags as expected on the client. If a package is built with a different USE flag combination, portage will either ignore the binary package (and use source-based build) or fail, depending on the options passed on to emerge

So I'm fairly sure that implies they can coexist based on the
directory structure. -
http://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Binary_package_guide#The_PKGDIR_layout

One big concern would be having a HUGE Packages metadata file and
making the look up too slow. I'm not sure how big that file could get
before things became an issue.
http://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Binary_package_guide#Pulling_packages_from_a_binary_package_host

>
> I don't really see the value in having EVERY combination of use flags
> on call though.
>
> Practically speaking I doubt this could be done.  You're talking about
> a LOT of combinations.
>
> However, I think it would be very useful to have a binpkg repository
> all the same.  Perhaps have one for each of a few common profiles with
> the default flags.  That alone would be a significant undertaking.
>
> Just about everybody who has talked about running Gentoo in a
> datacenter has set up a binpkg repository.  They may very well deviate
> from the default USE flags, but for the most part they try to keep
> their systems identical.  They would build updates as binpkg, install
> to a test system, and after testing deploy them to production and that
> would of course go quickly.
>
> I have a script I use to build binpkg nightly for the day's updates.
> That lets me review updates and deploy them quickly.  Any rebuilds/etc
> still take time, but the bulk of my updates are very fast this way
> with minimal time spent staring at the screen.  This would be another
> route to take if your really did need highly varied deployments.
>
> --
> Rich
>