Just stumbled over Gentoo prefix and it seems very exciting (see my
usecase below). My question:
Is it possible to use the host system's bash/gcc/... when having a
Gentoo prefix on Mac or Linux? I.e. a system for setting up software
which doesn't have *too* much redundancy with the host system. One would
then set PATH, LD_LIBRARY_PATH, MANPATH etc. to use it as an overlay
over the host system.
It wouldn't need to support all the Gentoo packages, just a select subset.
All the bootstrapping guides assume setting up a seperate toolchain for
Gentoo prefix. I know very little about Gentoo, but am eager to read up
on it. But just a tiny link to the right docs can save me massive
amounts of time now in the beginning.
Background:
The Python scientific/engineering open source community has a (widely
recognized) problem of distributing our software and integrating that
distribution mechanism into our development workflow.
Gentoo prefix seems like a perfect fit:
- Lots of scientific users don't have root access (run software on
clusters)
- Need to distribute software fast and iteratively to coworkers on the
other side of the world with a totally different setup
- Linux, Mac, Solaris, Windows...
There's lot of half-baked distribution solution available (sagemath.org,
femhub.org, enthought.com, pythonxy.com), but Gentoo seems like a better
choice for my project for several reasons.
Dag Sverre Seljebotn
