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Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2008 10:45:23 -0400
From: Richard Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org>
Subject: [gentoo-project] Re: [gentoo-dev]  Re: The KDE overlay moves forward
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Moving this to -project due to topic drift...

Steve Long wrote:
> Wulf C. Krueger wrote:
>> Most of us who are working on the overlay have been using alternative
>> package managers (PM) for quite some time now. Thus, the idea arose to go
>> a step further and actually make good use of the capabilities they offer
>> us.
>>
> Makes sense; after all you can do whatever you want in an overlay without
> concern for how it will affect anyone else.
>  

I wonder if there would be benefits into making gentoo more of a
meta-distribution along these lines.  Instead of having one definitive
portage tree with some experimental overlays, you'd instead have a
couple of branches:

1.  A core portage tree.  This would contain at least one package
manager and key system dependencies.  Any could be overridden by an
experimental overlay, but the general intention would be for most
ordinary users to use the core tree for the key dependencies like
gcc/glibc/baselayout/etc.  This will avoid major dependency issues if
everybody wants to demand their favorite versions of these kinds of
packages which are often unslotted.

2.  A repository manager GUI that lets users choose any number of
application repositories.  Said repositories are allowed to collide, and
users can select what priority the package manager should give to each
in the event of collision (priorities set both at an overall level and
per-package/category/etc).

3.  Gentoo would be free to endorse particular repositories, and
possibly manage some of them as well.  A default configuration would
give new users the sort of experience they'd expect to get by default.
Anybody could freely set up a repository with nothing more than an rsync
server, although to get linked by Gentoo there might be some minimal QA
standards.  There could also be multiple tiers of endorsement - from
"somewhat unlikely to outright rootkit your box" to "you should pay
these guys for this level of quality".  There could be license 
restrictions on endorsed repositories as well.

This would offer more user choice, and user involvement, since the 
various repositories could have varying requirements for participation. 
  Users could potentially fork any part of the distro and still benefit 
from the rest as well, with everybody benefiting from the resulting 
sharing.  The downside might be division of effort and less unification 
(many packages could end up having mutally-exclusive requirements such 
as specific package managers that implement particular EAPIs, etc).

This isn't really anything that requires any kind of action - but just 
food for thought that I figured I'd toss out there.
-- 
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