On Wed, 2007-06-20 at 22:01 +0100, Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
> The specific underlying question being, what are the use cases for
> binary packages?

Ever managed a network of multiple Gentoo identical Gentoo machines?

Compiling the exact same packages with the exact same
USE/C(XX)FLAGS/LDFLAGS/etc on multiple machines is an egregious waste of
resources, especially in a corporate environment where maintenance
windows simply aren't large enough to allow for a multiple-hour compile
job to run.  Plus, who keeps GCC on their production servers,
anyway?  ;] 

-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering Strategic Lead
Alpha/AMD64/x86 Architecture Teams
Games Developer/Council Member/Foundation Trustee
Gentoo Foundation