Note that such a number wouldn't be useful for comparing with, say,
other distributions or ports, because a) we can SLOT things, so we
don't need separate foo-1, foo-2 and foo-3 packages, and b) we don't
need to do a zillion foo, foo-python, foo-perl etc packages because of
USE flags.
Some wise person once said that "Its not the size of the tool its how well it works." I think that perhaps all this fuss over how many packages are in the repository is kind of pointless. The issue is really does it work for your use. Sure Fedora may have 6 billion packages but if it lacks the ONE packages that you need to do that job and its not easy to create a package for it then by golly Fedora isn't very useful. From personal experience I find it much easier to create ebuilds for non standard packages than it is to create RPMs plus the Portage tree has most of the packages I need by default (and as an added bonus I don't have to hunt down a thousand dependencies to install a single package).
So instead of comparing raw numbers think about this... Does it work for you? In non-standard situations is it easy to get it to do what you want it to do? If the answer to both is yes I think that says far more about the distro than the size of its repository. Just my $0.02
-Mike
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Michael E. Crute
Software Developer
SoftGroup Development Corporation
Linux, because reboots are for installing hardware.
"In a world without walls and fences, who needs windows and gates?"
