On Sat, Feb 5, 2011 at 4:52 PM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckin...@gmail.com>wrote:
> Apparently, though unproven, at 22:45 on Saturday 05 February 2011, Volker > Armin Hemmann did opine thusly: > > > again, you are starting from a mistaken premise. > > > > /usr/portage makes sense, when you consider its history. It may not be > the > > appropriate decision, but with its background it was logical back then. > > > > And if something is not broken, don't change it. You do not know what old > > tool/setting/whatever might suffocate. > > > > PORTDIR is not a mere workaround. If you are sure that there is no old > crap > > lingering around that might expect portdir as /usr/portage, use it. > > > > Besides /usr/src/ contains linux and other sources. Wrong too? It is f* > > tradition. portage does not contain temporary data or database stuff - > that > > crap is in /var/db, /var/tmp/portage, /var/lib. So the worst stuff is > > somewhere already. > > Tradition on it's own is a lousy idea for retaining anything. > > A tradition worth keeping is one that's worth having because it has use. > However most traditions are merely "but we always did it this way..." > > /usr/portage is a tradition, a hangover from BSD. > LFS is a standard and /usr/portage gets in the way of the standard. > Guess which one should trump the other? > > And the portage tree IS a database. You put (or cause to be put) data into > it, > which can be amended, edited, added to or removed, other actors query the > database for information (emerge, eix, etc). The fact that it is updated on > demand and not on the fly, that it is not relational in nature, that it > doesn't have "sql" anywhere in it's name and that it is purely file-based > does > not detract in the slightest from the simple fact that the tree is a > database. > > It's just plain outright stupid to have a default location for something > (that > by definition is variable) in a place that by definition (or by de-facto > consent) must be mountable read-only and have no ill effects on the rest of > the machine. > > -- > alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com > > Just put portage on it's own partition (LVM) and be done with it.
