Superduo?

qemilo · Posted: Tue May 06, 2003 9:49 am Post subject: Superduo?

Just have to release this idea running round in my brain.

The two Linux distros of my choise, ArchLinux and Gentoo, have several thing in common. They are both about choise, they are both about speed, they are both fairly up-to-date and they both focus the important relation between users and developers, focus the community.
AL is better in some ways. Better sollutions for installation (my opinion) and nice to be able to install binaries.
Gentoo has more options to optimise and custimise the system. Also Gentoo have more packages

I think it would be a very good idea to make these two systems working together, yet keep their distros as two seperated system, two teams cooperating only where its nescesary.
Portage for Arch and Pacman for Gentoo. Would be greate to use Pacman to install a package fast and easy, when I need a package, and let Portage optimise the system while I have to not use my computer. Think this sounds like a better idea than Gentoo devolopers starts making binaries, and less work on their sourcebased system. Or Arch developers starts making a portage system, with less work on their binarybased system. And it would let users have more packages to choose from.
Kind of a twoheaded supersystem

Please keep in mind. I am new to both the distros, and have no idea what the plans are. I am an User, I have no idea about the really differences between the two systems, or whether this would be trivial or not. Dont think its impossible though, and in my head the idea is very good.

What do you think?

charlieg · Posted: Tue May 06, 2003 10:27 am Post subject:

I think it's a good idea in concept.

I mean, let the source distro handles the sources and the binary distro handle the binaries.

However, I think there would be a lot of hurdles in implementing this. You'll have problems with programs interoperating due to different underlying expectations (eg which gcc was used for compilation or use flags). You'll have problems with getting pacman and portage to talk to each other.

But it's an interesting thought. File a bug suggesting it.

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qemilo · Posted: Thu May 08, 2003 1:12 pm Post subject:

Same topic on Arch Linux forum:

http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?p=3438#3438

plate · Posted: Thu May 08, 2003 1:51 pm Post subject:

Funny that you mention it. I know a few people who count Arch and Gentoo among their favourite Linux distributions. Overcoming the obvious Arch restriction that it's i686 only (no PPC, no Sparc, 100% PC-centric), I agree that Pacman [*] is a nice way of updating a binary distribution, but Gentoo is source-based, and I don't really see the point, but that's just me, I suppose...

Getting Portage to run on Arch is an entirely different matter and shouldn't be too hard. Check Installing Portage on Other Distros for details.

[*] I shiver at the thought of legal implications using that name...

pjp · Administrator Joined: 16 Apr 2002 Posts: 20067

Not to mention that mixing source based and binary based distros would be a nightmare*. I've dubbed any binary Gentoo as "Gentoo Valdez".

* - According to what I've heard from people who know what they're talking about.
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gsfgf · Veteran Joined: 08 May 2002 Posts: 1266

portage supports binary packages. all we need is a repository of prebuilt binaries. You could install this way if you must at the expense of losing USE configurations.
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charlieg · Posted: Thu May 08, 2003 11:25 pm Post subject:

gsfgf · Veteran Joined: 08 May 2002 Posts: 1266

XWRed1 · n00b Joined: 27 Jun 2002 Posts: 13

I'd LOVE to have binary packages of most things.

People always say it'd be too hard, Gentoo is source based, the ADVANTAGE of Gentoo is to watch gcc run.

But FreeBSD seems to pull off mixed binary and source package management just fine. If I want to build something from source ala Portage, just go into /usr/ports and do it. If I want a binary package, I just do pkg_add -r pkgname. Both of them seem to behave fine together.

I'll compile with optimizations and flex my use flags as much as the next guy, but sometimes I just don't have the time or resources. Like on my laptop, sometimes I wouldn't want to wait a half hour for it to compile something I need right now. Or if I ran Gentoo on a server (this is a big reason I don't), I wouldn't necessarily want to spend a bunch of cpu time compiling.

I don't know about others, but I like Gentoo not just because I can compile everything from source with OMG SUPAR OPTIMERIZATIONS. I like the init scripts, the filesystem layout, most of the way Portage works.

Of course, I can see the logistical problems of hosting alot of binaries. As for building them and deciding which USE flags to use, I'd suggest build them against a default set of USE flags for whatever Gentoo release they are matched with. "Gentoo releases?" you say. What are those?

Another thing I think would be nifty or cool would be to be able to sync my Portage tree to different branches. Once again, similar to the BSDs and Debian. When a Gentoo release is made, fork that and call it -STABLE or -RELEASE or something, and build binary packages for it with its default USE flags (i.e. when you install that version of Gentoo, whatever /etc/make.conf has). Let people sync to -STABLE/-RELEASE if they want to and just update it GLSAs. Thats something I could stand to put on a server, and use binary packages.

People who want to stay bleeding edge and sync their Portage trees with -CURRENT, and obviously its not practical to ALWAYS be building a new binary package for EVERY update to every ebuild in that tree. So those people can forgo most of the binaries, except maybe the GRP things and those other things that are kludged in as binaries because they can't be built or are a pain to build.

Yea, flame me out for hating open source or whatever. I don't care. The above is what I'd like to see. Badly. I think giving the big version releases of Gentoo a big bag of inertia by requiring binary packages of everything against a carefully chosen set of default USE flags for that release and forking the Portage tree and so on could perhaps lead to better QA on the distro in general. And I don't see how it'd detract from the ability to live in -CURRENT and pretty much operate as we do now, besides requiring man and hosting power.

Btw I am looking for constructive discussion, so try not to flame. If you see conflicts or logical fallacies please point them out to me, thanks.

charlieg · Posted: Wed May 14, 2003 8:32 am Post subject:

I think there's definitely room for a P2P like network of Gentoo machines sharing Gentoo binaries. That way you're not limited by space or bandwidth and I'm sure plenty would participate.

I'd be happy to leave my machine on and sharing the binaries I compiled (or downloaded) for my USE configuration.
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PT_LAmb · Posted: Wed May 14, 2003 8:56 am Post subject:

luk108 · n00b Joined: 21 Feb 2003 Posts: 9

PT_LAmb · Posted: Wed May 14, 2003 11:12 pm Post subject:

XWRed1 · n00b Joined: 27 Jun 2002 Posts: 13

luk108 · n00b Joined: 21 Feb 2003 Posts: 9

luk108 · n00b Joined: 21 Feb 2003 Posts: 9

XWRed1 · n00b Joined: 27 Jun 2002 Posts: 13

gravis · Posted: Mon May 19, 2003 2:09 pm Post subject: Mix USE

The problem is that you can't emule all USE combinaisons with patches. BTW, a few packages really support MANY USE variations.

Binaries would be great, even build with all possible USE. I have a laptop (PIII 800), and installing gentoo + XFREE + KDE took 2 days !!

endtransmission · n00b Joined: 16 Nov 2003 Posts: 48

dr_strange · Posted: Sun Feb 22, 2004 9:37 am Post subject:

I'll be probably not very popular with this opinion, but what I gathered from the fora so far the Gentoo devs do not really want to provide effort, and especially bugsupport to a binary tree; so in my opinion the best solution would be for those who want a binary Gentoo to fork it instead of mix and match.
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watashiwaotaku7 · n00b Joined: 26 Mar 2003 Posts: 70

you could, also have a new setting something like a type flag in which you can choose things like, server desktop multi-media firewall/router development or beta/testing, one could set their type and then portage would dowload binaries with use flags that are common to those types, ignoring entirely optimizations or having i386,i486,i586,i686 packages for x86 and whatever equivalent march types there are for other platforms, this would certainly reduce the number of permutations, though maybe not enough

<edit>
the type flag could also be used during install to include certain things besides the core operating system, things like X and assorted apps for mm or desktop and exclude it for server and firewall/router
</edit>

humbletech99 · Veteran Joined: 26 May 2005 Posts: 1229 Location: London

This idea is a must, gentoo developers take note!

However, couple of pitfalls:

Firstly, I would never let a binaary from another person's machine on my machine unless it came from gentoo.org and was signed off by the developers (I trust them to be careful so as not to destroy their reputation)

Secondly, having pre-compiled versions of all possible USE configurations is rediculous. Do what most other distros do, compile everything in, it won't make the world of difference. The you have the choice between fast installation of precompiled (like most distros today) and customised self-compiled stuff. So you can mix and match according to your needs/your time.

Give us the binary option!

d3vlin · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 02 Apr 2003 Posts: 134

aidanjt · Posted: Thu Mar 09, 2006 5:47 pm Post subject:

Have you people not heard of GRP?

As for the comments about 'different branches' of portage.. we already have that, masks and arch + ~arch packages, which makes it easy to mix and mach keywords via /etc/portage.

humbletech99 · Veteran Joined: 26 May 2005 Posts: 1229 Location: London

yes, but I don't think GRP has been pushed enough and isn't big enough to be a real attraction...

You need something with reputation, preferably located at binaries.gentoo.org or something equivalent to APT repositories ...
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