An idea to speed up installs

Lasitus · Last edited by Lasitus on Thu Feb 27, 2003 12:10 am; edited 1 time in total

I was sitting here waiting for KDE to compile and an idea popped into my head. Let me start by saying I love Gentoo like the idea of customization and making a system compiled just for my very own computer. While it takes a lot of time, I am sticking with it. You can have the best of both worlds though, if you have enough hard drive space... I don't know if anyone has posted this before but here i goes:

There could be an option in make.conf for people with large HDs and good bandwidth to download precompiled binaries for say a 386 and compile later as time allows. It could work say like this:

1) The user says emerge kde
2) It downloads all precompiled packages that are dependencies of kde and extracts and installs them. (kde too of course)
3) In a database somewhere, it keeps track of what has been downloaded and optimized. I'm thinking a large que type database that deletes records completed...
4) The user walks off from the computer. An idle indicator starts compiling packages in the order downloaded and putting files with a . in front for hiding them much like the /._cfg0000name.ext
5) If a file is not in use, it replaces it and goes on....

What do you think? good idea? feasible? worthwhile?

Lasitus · Posted: Wed Feb 26, 2003 11:37 pm Post subject:

Does GRP do this? Perhaps I should have read about it before suggesting this.

darktux · Posted: Wed Feb 26, 2003 11:45 pm Post subject:

You'd have to download both binaries (GRP) and the sources... That's just a bit too much. I vote NAY :wink:

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gsfgf · Veteran Joined: 08 May 2002 Posts: 1266

plate · Posted: Thu Feb 27, 2003 2:20 am Post subject:

Lasitus · Posted: Thu Feb 27, 2003 5:35 am Post subject:

ok, tell me if I'm wrong, but what I found is GRP is simply a precompiled version of something. My suggestion is the best of both worlds. Precompiled with a background compiler that optimizes when the computer isn't busy or is idle. So, it would be different.

I suppose it wouldn't be too hard to make a script do that. A simple "emerge package" with an install log would do that.

darktux · Posted: Thu Feb 27, 2003 11:30 am Post subject:

pjp · Administrator Joined: 16 Apr 2002 Posts: 20485

darktux · Posted: Thu Feb 27, 2003 5:04 pm Post subject:

Lasitus · Posted: Thu Feb 27, 2003 6:12 pm Post subject:

Naughtyus · Posted: Fri Feb 28, 2003 1:06 am Post subject:

What about a distributed computing type effort for pre-compiling (and hosting?) binaries for different systems?

seratne · n00b Joined: 27 Jun 2002 Posts: 5

I'd be interested in this. However as others have mentioned, it can be done manually with a little effort. Basically download the GRP of the package you want, install it, then emerge the same package again with a nice level that will only take idle cpu time. The only problem is getting all of the binary packages, as i believe a GRP isn't provided for every package in the portage tree.

Arthur Vandelay · n00b Joined: 09 Jan 2003 Posts: 55

Geez, has anybody ever thought of just planning ahead when doing a big compile? Do it overnight, or when at work. This is way of life for me with my duron 700.

moosesocks · n00b Joined: 09 Dec 2002 Posts: 36

Hmm.... let me try to clarify a few things.

What the poster wants to do is to get a system up and running in under an hour by using binary packages. When the PC is idle, the source code is then downloaded and compiled, and the binary packages are safely unmerged transparently to the user.

GRP does not do this. It simply installs a pre-compiled equivilant to the source distribution, and emerge isn't aware of it. (and the current group of GRP packages is grossly outdated, and only availible at install time).

Regarding distributed compilation, see distcc, which does exactly that. At the moment, I believe it does not work perfectly with portage.

darktux · Posted: Fri Feb 28, 2003 12:23 pm Post subject:

Actually I'm using distcc for quite some time now, read this:

http://gentoo.superlucidity.net/www/distcc.html
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Lego my ego, and I'll lego your knowledge

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