[sf-lug] Gentoo Binary Project

[Justin Ryan]

On Tue, Aug 26, 2008 at 9:42 AM, David Rosenstrauch <darose at darose.net> wrote:
> Asheesh Laroia wrote:
>> But phillip - have you considered switching to Ubuntu or Debian?  Those
>> distributions are based around the idea of built packages, but also allow
>> you to rebuild and customize the packages if desired and still have the
>> package manager be aware of them.
>
> Or Arch.  Same pluses as Asheesh pointed out - and arguably even easier
> to build packages for.
>

Sure, then to get software which isn't available or up-to-date, you
install portage-prefix, which then installs new copies of all the
stuff that Ubuntu and Debian installed for you, and they fight it out
with light sabers.  Last time I emerge -u system in my prefix setup,
which I use to build one package that I don't have on Ubuntu, it took
a day.

I've actually been thinking about using Portage to generate rpm and
deb packages, for creating minidistributions, and also for making it
simpler to deploy some things I use portage-prefix for.

I find ebuilds easier to write, update, modify, etc.. than I've ever
found .spec or the dpkg directory structure.

So I'm interested in helping with this project.  I think if you want
to do this, you pretty much need to select or invent a package format,
or come up with a generic wrapper or extension for portage which can
help it to feed a packaging system.

This would probably require changes to Portage, not sure how
significant, but I have some ideas.

Best,

J

-- 
Justin Alan Ryan
Independent Interaction Architect
http://www.bitmonk.net/
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