On Saturday 05 February 2011 19:43:11, Cedric Sodhi wrote: > 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 >
Portage DEFAULTS to /usr/portage as the location for the tree etc. While that may be wrong, you can always change the PORTDIR variable in make.conf ( same with DISTDIR and PKGDIR ). Since it's something you can change in the very beginning of the installation, I wouldn't count that as a workaround ( as symlinking, (re)mounting etc. would be ). I don't see where the problem is ? There is nothing wrong with portage itself in that matter. One could propose to change the default PORTDIR in make.globals and in the docs though. Sincerely Meik Frischke
