On Wed, 3 Nov 2004, Grant Byers wrote:
Distribution maintainers generally go to great lengths to ensure code is compiled properly for a particular package and the package is usually well tested before mainstream release. Distributions such as Debian take this one step further, breaking this down to package maintainers.
I don't think Debian is particularly special in this respect.
Before chosing a distribution such as Gentoo, you really need to stop and ask yourself ;-
I don't really see why you say "such as Gentoo".
1. Do I have the time and patience to read all the relevant documentation, forums, bug reports etc for each and every package?
This point applies to any distribution. There is no difference in your research requirements with Gentoo. All distros have a startup cost, and then its up to you on how closely to follow bug reports etc.
2. Do I have the knowledge and skills to do a better job than these distribution/package maintainers?
Gentoo uses the same strategy - it works by the package maintainer providing a build script (ebuild). The main advantage of gentoo over other distros is that the build script can take notice of global, or package-specific variables that affect compile-time options.
3. Am I prepared to research dependancies for a given package, then compile each with the appropriate set of compiler flags?
Gentoo handles dependencies, and chooses sane defaults. Again, it's really a question of how custom you want. You can get away with not learning about specific compiler flags at all in Gentoo, often not so in Debian :)
4. How does Gentoo really help me in achieving any of the above? (particularly #3)
For me, its advantages are the flexible "packaging" methods. This means you don't have to have a .deb or .rpm containing all the files - you can download the source/binaries from distributors (e.g. think macromedia flash, realplayer, free/demo games). Also, for packages you'd have to compile by hand in Debian - you don't have to go learning the compiler flags! It's all[1] packaged.
I don't really care about flexibility in compiling regular packages, but it's great that heaps of bleeding edge, or curious-licensing things are available with it. For me, I wanted to try the new X.org server, I just installed it very easily (a-la apt-get install xserver-xorg, but with no apt source mangling). I haven't dared yet with my Debian machines - I have to hunt for experimental packages, then mangle around all the XFree86 stuff.
<snip downwards>
With regards to Gentoo, people tend to get a little carried away with what it offers as opposed to what _you_ in particular can achieve with it. Systems software, such as the tool-chain tend to require very different compile flags than do application software. There is also a lot of software around that attempts to be optimised in code, using tricks with floating point math, pointer arithmetic or inline assembly, just for example. Some optimisations will break this code, or code that depends on it.
I agree that people go silly enabling all sort of compiler optimisation flags that frequently break things. This is by no means required though. And a good package maintainer will explicitly exclude the options that [are known to] break it. FYI, you can get pre-built binary packages too - you don't _have_ to compile everything.
I'm primarily a Debian user - low maintenance, basic requirements. But for some of my devel work, being able to install any package that would require manual compilation (really learning configure flags etc) means that Gentoo makes things easier.
Cheers,
- Simon
[1] Lets not be too pedantic. Obviously _everything_ isn't packaged, but
they've got an awful lot.
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