On Sat, Oct 22, 2011 at 4:52 AM, Lorenzo Cogotti <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi, > > I would like to suggest a new feature for entropy (unless it already is > there and I didn't notice :)): adding support for local repositories. > > Sometimes a user could have no internet connection, for whatever reason: > - the user is traveling and has no reliable connection > - the user just installed Sabayon and network card is not recognized > - whatever else (slow connection, etc...) > > It would be useful to have support for repositories that are not online, > but local, some examples would be: > - local repositories from DVD/optical drive > - local repositories from directories > - local repositories from other partitions > > The feature could be implemented editing /etc/entropy/repositories.conf, > in a way that entropy can distinguish between the repository category, > for example a DVD URL would be: > cd://path > a local path could be: > file://path > and so on. > > There could also be tools to download packages from another online > repository in a way that they can be added on a Sabayon system as local > packages, for example this could be a use case: > > - the user installs Sabayon/uses Sabayon and for whatever reason he/she > has no internet connection > - the user boots from another PC and goes to http://packages.sabayon.org > - the user finds a package he/she is interested in and clicks "download > with entire deptree", this is basically the same thing you would get > with: > equo install --empty --deep <package> > - the user then copies its downloaded packages into the local > repositories, possibly using an equo command > - the user can now install those packages whenever he/she wants without > having to rely on internet connection. > > This feature could also be useful for "freezing the system", assuming > that a user doesn't want to risk system instability due to updates, a > user could run an hypotetical: > > equo snapshot <repository> > > to copy its currently installed packages with the same exact same > version to a local repository and generate a "mirror" with all the > packages he/she needs. To reduce the bandwidth this could rely on the > packages cache when available. > > Would this feature be useful or am I just suggesting a bunch of useless > things? >
This has been brought up before. The consensus conclusion was that Sabayon is pretty much highly reliant on an internet connection. The user experience on Sabayon with some kind of "sneaker net" would be very frustrating. However, we do provide "Daily" releases. Of the developers who know what is involved in trying to put together some kind of offline support, nobody is interested in investing any effort. If somebody wants to step up and sort out the details for offline support, we'll gladly review their finished product. Of course, this is the same thing that is true of most Open Source efforts.
