There are several reasons why portage, neither the tree nor (especially not) the distfiles should reside in /usr.
/var is expected to be heavily written and read from, as it is the case with the portage tree. It's possibly subject to fragmentation and small file sizes and heavy changes, which is usually accounted for my choosing an appropriate filesystem and configuring it accordingly. /usr is expected to be a static directory with mostly read access and few to no changes on a running system. This issue seems to have been ignored for a long time. When I asked about it, I met two types of responses: a) Those who thought about it and agreed, that portage should be moved b) Those who replied "deal with it" If you can think of good counter arguement which *logically* supports that portage should by default reside in /usr (including the distfiles and everything else variable) please tell us. If not, please refrain from logically irrelevant statements such as the above, "you can always do <insert some random workarround here>" or similar ones. If you have further arguments to support my point, I'd also welcome them to the discussion, I expect 90% or more of the real arguments to support my point. I've also heard rumours that such an outcome has already been there in the past, yet, gentoo developers ignored it and kept portage in /usr for unknown and most likely unlogical reasons. I believe these rumours. If again, the logical conclusion will be that portage should be moved but it is not acted upon but logic is ignored, please ask yourself what kind of distribution we are. "It is a community built around a distribution which is driven by more than 300 developers and thousands of users. " regards, MD
