Re: [gentoo-dev] RFC - Gentoo on the Lab

[Ricardo Loureiro <rjlouro@rjlouro.org>]

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On Mon, 22 Aug 2005 16:38:11 +0200
Marius Mauch <genone@gentoo.org> wrote:

> Define "usable". As only portage uses the tree it would be the only
> thing that might break.

Usable in the way that the client machines should be able to use
portage, except it's the hacked (or new package) version that should
do everything from the SQL server. For example, a emerge package
would behave in 2 possible ways;1- calculate it's dependencies from
the portage tree on the SQL server and request the binary packages,
2- Request the package and the server would calculate dependencies
and get the binary done. I'm more keen on the second since it takes
away processor time from the clients, but that involves sending
sensitive information such as world files and make.conf over the
network.

> As far as I know, yes. But it wasn't what you wanted anyway (only
> implemented a SQL cache for faster searching, interesting that
> almost
> every "rewrite" attempt implements searching first)

I asked because it would be nice to talk to their devs, so I could
know in advance what were their problems and what they would have
done different. Anyway the project will be different, as you said,
but another goal was to produce a single machine mode that would use
a relational database engine as portage tree.

> 
> I'd guess baselayout + it's deps + libc are the absolute minimum
> (excluding baselayout-lite and other embedded solutions).

Thanks, that was exactly what I was looking for.

> 
> > 4- Any ideas on how the conf files should be handled?
> 
> Depends on your client nodes, if they are (almost) identical I'd
> just
> sync them from a master node. If not it gets complicated.

That's the problem, very different machines (and maybe some time
later even arch's). The best way was to produce yet another
etc-update, but 5 months for a single person is too little time for
that. In general most of the times if the config files are not
changed it's safe to overwrite, else don't, but sometimes pakcage
versions have config files re-written, and that's a problem. Just
wanted to know what you ppl do in these situations and maybe found
something I was not aware of.

> 
> Anyway, I hope you realize that your project doesn't only involve
> hacking on portage, but rewriting almost all of it for the client
> part.
> Actually I'd rather suggest you start from scratch (so you also
> make it
> work completely without a tree), or wait for Brians rewrite in HEAD
> (not
> a good idea though if you have a deadline). Server should be less
> of an
> issue, mostly config tweaks there.

My initial thought was a from scratch portage in python that could
use many of the code already done, that would be better since portage
itself doesn't need a client-server mode and I could learn a lot more
this way. Waiting is not an option, no pressure on other ppl and
limited time for the project, but I hope to have the time to change
it after the deadline as a personal hobbie.

> But as Donnie said, gentoo-portage-dev is the better list for this
> discussion.

Did already, thanks for your help already.


Ricardo Loureiro
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