>From walt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Wed, Feb 08, 2006 at 01:33:47PM -0800:
> Steve Mynott wrote:
> > Maybe its a little early in the life of DF pkgsrc to think of this,
> > but has anyone considering hooking up the kernel/userland build
> > process so that the kernel and userland binaries are under the binary
> > package control of the pkgsrc pkg_* utilities?
> >
> > I'm not sure quite how this would work and what the size of the
> > packages would be? would /bin/* be in a bin-x.x.x package or /bin/ls
> > be ls-x.x.x?
> >
> > The latter (lots of little packages) would allow easier updating of
> > the system...
>
> This sounds very much like gentoo-linux, which is a linux distribution
> built entirely from sources, including the base system itself and all
> userland packages. All updates to the distribution are done thru their
> 'portage' system, which is very much the same as pkgsrc or the FBSD
> 'ports' system.
>
> I've been using gentoo for several years and I'm *very* happy with it.
>
> I can easily imagine pkgsrc/dragonfly/stable/kernel/1.4 and
> pkgsrc/dragonfly/unstable/userland/comp/gcc/gcc4 just as examples.
>
> I think it's a nifty idea. Everything is a metapackage :o)
Fine, just keep in mind the completely braindead aspect of
gentoo: the failure to have any library version consistency
or consistent configuration across package alternatives
(just look at the side-effects of which cron program you
choose, they come out of the box with completely different
setups).
The defining feature of the base system in FreeBSD is a set
of libraries whose versioning is considered as a set and where
library number bumps are carefully planned with respect to
changes. Thus ensuring that it is relatively easy to run old
binaries on new systems, and ensuring that you are usually
free of upgrade hell--within the scope of the basesystem.
(at least that is the goal....)
Furthmore these library changes are carefully matched to
changes in the sysctl's, ioctls, and syscalls.
This is a golden bit of work that makes FreeBSD work well
(and that Dragonfly has inherited).
Linux distributions such as Debian attempt to do this as
well, but whereas say FreeBSD limits its gaze to a handful
of programs and treats the rest in a more "newest version"
way, Debian attempts to do the same over many many
more programs and libraries.
***
My main point is that "gentoo's way" includes many
complicated design decisions about which is it better not
to consider as a unit as many people will feel different
ways about different aspects and be aware of different
details. Thus making the whole conversation useless without
a great deal of discipline on the part of the people
discussing the subject.
My response in the first part is an example of this: whereas
you may have only been refering to one small detail of
gentoo (that everything can be installed separately), I
choose to respond to your message based on an entirely
different part of the experience. Woo to my lack of
discipline.
***
Paul
