On Thu, 2003-04-03 at 19:34, Carlos C. Gonzalez wrote:
> Hi Robert,
>
> On April 3, 2003 05:17 pm, Robert Spahr wrote:
>
> [snipped]
>
> > You seemed to miss my point completely. I did not mean that an easier
> > installer would dumb gentoo down.
> >
> > Making a CD of binaries issued every 6 months, and rejecting the portage
> > system would be missing a large part of what makes gentoo so interesting.
> >
>
> Sorry Robert. I stand corrected. I think I took one sentence out of your
> post and went off in left field with it :).
>
> Rejecting the portage system in my mind is definitely not good. It's one of
> the best things Gentoo has going for it. A CD of binaries might be nice too
> but not really what I had in mind since compiling programs is really no big
> deal once one has a working Gentoo system.
>
[% snip %]
I realize this wasn't really asked, but this thread got me thinking
about what would be involved in creating a set of binaries for offline
installations. It seems to me that portage makes this quite simple:
(1) Create a file containing a list of the packages you wish to
install. Mine's called pkglist.txt, and looks like this:
sys-apps/vcron
app-admin/metalog
app-misc/mc
app-crypt/gnupg
dev-lang/python
dev-lang/perl
app-editors/vim
net-www/apache
dev-util/cvs
(2) Set your USE flags to be the same as on the target systems.
(3) Use portage to check what packages would be installed to satisfy all
the dependencies for your chosen packages.
# emerge --pretend --emptytree $(<pkglist.txt)
(4) Use portage to download the files, keeping them separate from your
regular distfiles.
# DISTDIR=/mnt/raid/my_pkg_snapshot/ emerge \
--fetchonly --emptytree $(<pkglist.txt)
(5) Burn the downloads onto CD.
(6) Copy the downloads to the /usr/portage/distfiles dir on the target
machine before doing the installs/upgrades.
(7) Run the following command to install your packages:
# emerge $(<pkglist.txt)
This is all off the top of my head, ie. untested. Does anyone see any
problems with this approach?
Thanks,
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