On Thursday 26 January 2006 17:17, MIkey wrote:
> Paul de Vrieze wrote:
> > The "way around this" would be to change bootstrap.sh back to building a
> > minimal version of the current version that is then used to compile the
> > rest of the system, including the C library and gcc itself. Between this
> > however the original bootstrap compiler could be removed.
> >
> > This however goes deep into bootstrapping a linux system. A complicated
> > matter that is not for the weak of heart.
>
> The bootstrap.sh script, with minor bugfixes and perhaps a pause after the
> gcc build, is a perfectly working method of bootstrapping gentoo.
>
> Another small fact has been glossed over.  The stage3 method first upgrades
> gcc-3.3.5 to gcc-3.3.6, then gcc-3.4.4.  An incredible waste of time that
> easily avoided by installing from a stage1 instead of a stage3.  Yes, you
> could run bootstrap.sh on a stage3 tarball, but that is not what the
> documentation tells the users to do.

Running a bootstrap when not bootstrapping is also completely unsupported and 
may give you very strange results. Doing it with less compilation is 
possible, but requires some portage overriding with --nodeps. The 
documentation is mainly supposed to work always, not be the most efficient 
way to do things. 

> As a process to get gentoo installed the stage3 method sucks, period. 
> There is absolutely no advantage to it over a stage1 whatsoever.  At
> certain times when the stage3 tarball was only released one week previous
> and there have been no major upgrades, you might save time.  That is a very
> limited window of advantage.  Installing from stage1 narrows down what
> problems can happen considerably and would be much easier to support in the
> long run.

First of all, the object to be as fast as possible has been dropped as main 
gentoo goal years ago. Stage 3 is indeed based on an old base. It however 
starts you with a working system in which all assumptions made by ebuilds 
about the system are true. This means one should expect a stage 3 to have no 
problems emerging any package. This is not true for a stage 1 or stage 2.

Paul

-- 
Paul de Vrieze
Gentoo Developer
Mail: pauldv@gentoo.org
Homepage: http://www.devrieze.net