On Sat, Sep 24, 2005 at 11:29:56AM +0800, Linux GNUbie wrote: > The beauty of running a binary based GNU/Linux distribution not > particularly on CentOS alone but in general (includes Debian, Red Hat, > SuSE, Mandriva, etc.) is before the updates are released to the public > it has been tested and compiled for use in enterprise production use.
You have something quite similar with Gentoo. After all, in what way does
testing an ebuild or testing a binary package differ? The ebuild uses the
same source for all testers. The only difference is that ebuilds can behave
differently based on your USE flags (and a few other variables in your
make.conf - but USE is the most notable one).
Some people ask me if their mega-size-USE-flag affects performance in a
negative way. It doesn't, assuming that you still understand why you set
certain USE flags in that variable. Don't forget, the behavior of most
ebuilds doesn't change with each USE flag change - only to those the ebuild
listens to.
For instance, if you check the USE flags for mysql, you'll notice that it
only is affected by:
berkdb, big-tables, debug, doc, minimal, perl, readline, ssl, static, tcpd
How many MySQL users do you think have tested the result of the MySQL ebuild
using your USE flags? That'll be quite a lot - and we are not only talking
about Gentoo users, but also general MySQL users who manually build the
sources (many MySQL production users do this this way) using the configure
--with-blabla/--without-blabla tags that are mapped onto the USE flags in
Gentoo.
Anyway, what I wanted to state was that you can easily test packages
yourself. Build the package on your buildserver, deploy that package on your
development machine, stage it through the necessary pillars (like testing,
staging, simulation) to eventually deploy the new package on your production
system.
This is a pattern used on many environments, even by those using pure binary
packages. The difference with Gentoo is that they are immediately pinned to
that binary package while Gentoo allows you to improve the package without
much effort, slim down the installation to what you need (effectively
decreasing the possibility of a security flaw or software bug affecting you)
and even optimize the build to your system environment.
Wkr,
Sven Vermeulen
--
Gentoo Foundation Trustee | http://foundation.gentoo.org
Gentoo Documentation Project Lead | http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/gdp
Gentoo Council Member
The Gentoo Project <<< http://www.gentoo.org >>>
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