Re: [gentoo-user] Portage Storage using SVN

[Hans-Werner Hilse <hilse@web.de>]

Hi,

On Sun, 23 Jul 2006 02:42:43 -0600
"Trenton Adams" <trenton.d.adams@gmail.com> wrote:

> I proposed this awhile back, and got shot down.  At the time, the
> arguments for using SVN for portage storage were pretty shallow, and
> someone was able to easily shoot them down.  I believe I have come up
> with better reasoning for using SVN.  Someone may still shoot them
> down, but hey, it's worth a try.

#1:
You're aware that there's a CVS for portage, aren't you? I'm still not
quite sure if you are suggesting using SVN for the portage mirrors and
if you are suggesting that users also have a full SVN history on the
clients, too?

> PROBLEM 1
> [...]
> PROBLEM 2
> [...]
> PROBLEM 3
> [...]

Well, are those really problems at all? I mean, isn't it easy to
overcome them? Is it worth dedicating time and work into that svn thing?

> POTENTIAL ISSUES
> Now, I'm not entirely sure of the performance implications of
> subversion for this purpose.  So, that would definitely have to either
> be tested, or someone would have to talk with the subversion folks to
> know if it would be a problem for thousands of users to access
> subversion in readonly mode.

Well, of course! There's definately a reason to use rsync.

> It would certainly be annoying for a
> developer to go "svn commit", and have to wait for half an hour
> because everyone else is updating their local copies.  But, that could
> be solved by mirrors only getting updated once every day, at 12
> midnight.

Oh, yeah. Your midnight, my midnight? It would definately be annoying
to make a small glitch and have to wait >24hrs until the fix for that
gets promoted. The "problem" you mentioned that at some points there
are slightly errorneous ebuilds in portage or minor inconsistencies can
only be fixed by promoting updates fast.

The solution you propose costs a lot of CPU power, even more storage on
the mirrors and lacks some positive aspects that the current solution
has. Take a look at e.g. the major BSDs ports and package systems. They
certainly have similar problems.

OK, looking at the BSDs, I like the feature that there are branches
with the aim to build a package tree that is as consistent as possible.
That would be a plus. But that would imply a lot of work and a change
in ebuild maintainance. I don't see this coming soon for Gentoo.

-hwh
-- 
gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list