Re: [gentoo-portage-dev] Next major version

[Brian Harring <ferringb@gentoo.org>]

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On Fri, Aug 12, 2005 at 12:04:34PM -0400, Kristian Benoit wrote:
> I remember, when I started using Gentoo, reading that portage is a stand
> alone tool, it is not bind into Gentoo in anyway, someone could use it
> on redhat, debian, lfs...
Nice intention, but impossible with stable/alpha code- the 
abstractions are missing.  No config abstractions, but more 
importantly no format abstractions; no true package object.

> Back then I was using lfs so I thought portage could be the way to go on
> lfs, but I realized that Gentoo fit my needs and I did'nt have to
> compile everything by hand anymore and still have everything compiled by
> my machines :) OH JOY !!!
Heh, came via the route I did...

> But 5 years or so later, the only official place to get portage releases
> is still in the gentoo mirrors. There is no RSS feed or anything like
> that. I still believe that portage has the potential to be so powerful
> that redhat, debian, ... could be building their packages using portage,
> managing their own tree, having night build.
> 
> The problem is see, is that the initial portage vision (or perhaps my
> initial vision, a vision I still have) has not been carried along with
> it's developpement.
The vision got blocked by the implementation.  Try busting all of the 
globals out of portage, then abstracting all ebuild specific actions 
(doebuild) behind package apis, so that different formats can be 
swapped on the fly.  Hell, binding dbapi and *tree classes together 
into one, and having them properly inherited from a base is required, 
rather then lots of duplicated code.

From there, how do you represent the *depends of a package, so that 
the resolver can be reused across different configurations of package 
format (this box being rpm, that being ebuild fex); need to break it 
down into restrictions, handing the actual depends matching off to 
repositories, with the resolver shifting sets of returned 
packages/restrictions around to build up a graph.
 
Either way, look at 
gentoo-src/portage/portage and 
gentoo-src/portage/rewrite-misc

Work is underway, help is needed, jump in and start digging :)
The design *should* allow for lots of crazy crap, although anyone who 
sees a flaw please speak up now :)

> Having an official web site, doc, ... will help getting visibility and
> effort from the rest of the world thus we'll have better tools and
> eventually extend portage beyond Gentoo.
API for tools, a *sane* api moreso :)

~harring

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