Re: [gentoo-dev] New project: binhost

[Andrew Ammerlaan <andrewammerlaan@riseup.net>]

On 10/02/2021 18:57, Andreas K. Hüttel wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I'm announcing a new project here - "binhost"
> 
> "The Gentoo Binhost project aims to provide readily installable, precompiled
> packages for a subset of configurations, via central binary package hosting.
> Currently we are still in the conceptual planning stage. "
> 
> https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:Binhost
> 
> If you're interested in helping out, feel free to add yourself on the wiki
> page.
> 
> Note that I see actually *building* the packages not as the central point of
> the project (that could be e.g. a side effect of a tinderbox). I'm more
> concerned about
> * what configurations should we use

Others have already suggested starting with a minimal set of flags or 
starting with the profiles, and then adding flags at request. I would 
like to suggest the opposite approach, start with binpkgs of packages 
which have all or most of the flags enabled, and then add more 
specific/minimal configurations of that package later. Because from an 
user perspective it is less of a problem to install a binpkg which has 
more features than you need, than it is to install a binpkg which is 
lacking a certain feature you need. Therefore, I would start with 
configurations of packages that have most/all things enabled, and thus 
are usable for the largest amount of people. This would pull in more 
dependencies, but for binpkgs this is less of a problem since they don't 
add compile time.

> * what portage features are still needed or need improvements (e.g. binpkg
> signing and verification)

I think a bugtracker for this might be a good idea at some point. In 
general, I think that portage's binpkg support is very good already, 
there are however some things that could be improved. Bug 
https://bugs.gentoo.org/687668 comes to mind (and some other things that 
were already mentioned by others).

The wiki guide on binpkgs[1] also mentions that:
"""
The support for multiple binary package servers is somewhat incomplete. 
If several servers serve a binary package for the same package version, 
then only the first one will be considered. This can be problematic when 
these binary packages differ in their USE variable configuration and the 
USE variable configuration of a later binary package would match the 
systems configuration.
"""
I don't know if this is still accurate, but if it is that would 
definitely be something that could use some improvement.

[1] https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Binary_package_guide

> * how should hosting look like
> * and how we can test this on a limited scale before it goes "into production"
> * ...
> 
> Comments, ideas, flamebaits? :D
> 
> Cheers,
> Andreas
>