Re: [gentoo-dev] overlay usage and maintainence [was: DistroWatch and Gentoo packages: status quo and future]

[Sebastian Pipping <webmaster@hartwork.org>]

Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
> Because an overlay model has only a single foo-1.2. Think of it like
> stacks of paper. You've got your main repository:
> 
>   ::gentoo    foo-1.1 foo-1.2 foo-1.3
> 
> and on top of that you put your overlay:
> 
>   ::extras          foo-1.2         foo-1.4
>   ::gentoo  foo-1.1 foo-1.2 foo-1.3
> 
> and then looking down from the top, all an overlay model package
> manager sees is the foo-1.2 from the overlay. There's no
> foo-1.2::gentoo and foo-1.2::extras, there's just a single foo-1.2
> that's made from (gentoo + extras).

I see.  So it would not work for dependencies but it should work for
masking.  That alone wouldn't make me happy, though.


> There's a different way of looking at it that focuses more on the
> repository level view at [1].
> 
> [1]: http://ciaranm.wordpress.com/2009/04/16/distributed-distribution-development-and-why-git-and-or-funtoo-is-not-it/

Interesting read.  Can you think of anything technical that would make
moving portage to this model impossible?



Sebastian