On Wednesday 12 January 2005 10:15 pm, Valarie and Nick Schmidt
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Why not have something like the package cd from the
> install....bindist.....maybe an option to have emerge -k pull from a
> website? There are many times i need a quick system and program to get
> up and running.
Because, except under fairly controlled circumstances, any precompiled
binary won't work.
For example, there are almost certainly issues with using packages compiled
with CHOST=i386-pc-linux-gnu on a CHOST=i686-pc-linux-gnu system. [Don't
change CHOST after stage 1, IIRC the docs correctly.]
I *know* there are issues running a program compiled with gcc 3.3 on a
system that's gcc 3.4 only. (Throw 2.95 in there and you have a receipe
for disaster.)
When you can control these circumstances, you can set up portage to use
binary packages from a local repositiory. I assume you could even make
your repository public and anyone with a similar enough setup could use
it. [For most packages, it is sufficent to have the same CHOST and
toolchain (compiler, linker, etc.)]
Of course, non-C{++,} packages might not have these restrictions, or others
instead.
Finally, you have to do USE management. I believe the binary packages
contain the USE information, but I don't think the name varies (so it's
hard to have multiple versions) when the USE flags change. So, if even a
single important USE is different that how the binary is compiled, you'll
have to recompile to see the changes anyway.
I do feel the pain of compiling: I'm running a PII 450, but if you want the
flexibility gentoo gives you, you have to put up with it.
[Well, I suppose you don't have to, but there are *a lot* of problems that
have to be solved before we'll see a general-purpose gentoo binary
mirror.]
--
Boyd Stephen Smith Jr.
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
ICQ: 514984 YM/AIM: DaTwinkDaddy
--
[email protected] mailing list
