Re: PORTDIR default - changing PORTDIR variable - WAS Re: [gentoo-user] Re: separate / and /usr to require initramfs 2013-11-01

[Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com>]

On 01/10/2013 15:52, Tanstaafl wrote:
> On 2013-10-01 8:46 AM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> I know that it is probably trivial, but I like to read official docs for
>>> things like this...
> 
>> It is trivial. All that it is, is a path to where some stuff is. That's
>> all, nothing more.
> 
> Ok, thanks... but (call me anal, because I am) I still think this
> deserves at least a tiny mention in the formal documentation somewhere,
> even if its just on a a wiki page or whatever.
> 
> Also, obviously the man docs for portage and make.conf should be updated...


Err, yeah, that should have been done.

But none of that fazes me anymore. You should see some of the docs I'm
forced to use for "professional" "carrier grade" "premium level support"
products....

> 
>> Change this in make.conf:
>>
>> PORTDIR="/var/portage"
>> DISTDIR="/var/distfiles"
>> PKGDIR="/var/packages"
> 
> Hmmm...
> 
> Currently, everything is in /usr/portage:
> 
> /usr/portage
> /usr/portage/distfiles
> /usr/portage/packages
> 
> But the new defaults are 3 separate directories as you specified above?
> 
> Or was that a typo, and they should be:
> 
> /var/portage
> /var/portage/distfiles
> /var/portage/packages

No, I have them the way I posted.

For years portage shipped with this really dumbass stupid notion of
shoving local overlays, binpkgs and distfiles all in with the tree.
Dumb, dumb, dumb. It makes using rsync needlessly difficult and you
can't deal with the tree as a single directory unit without putting an
exclusion in.

So I split them up and rigged things so each category of thing is in
it's own distinct directory tree. Like I said earlier, they are just
paths and you can put them anywhere you like. You too can put yours
anywhere it makes sense to you.

> 
> ?
> 
> Another question...
> 
> Since these are the new defaults, how do new installs define them? Are
> they explicitly set in make.conf now? Or is it somewhere else more
> low-level - and if so, wouldn't it be better to change it there once
> I've moved everything and confirmed it is working properly?

The default is in the portage code somewhere. I don't care where.

What I do know is how to make mine something different, and that's what
I did.

Look, this is not hard. It's like having a photo app default to storing
your photos in "~/.local/share/my-app/DCIM/data/local/photos/public/"
and you take one look at this and decide that's for the birds. So you
click View->Settings and see "Photo Library location", make it
"~/photos" and promptly forget that the stupid default ever existed.

This is exactly like that.


> 
>> move the directories to the new location
> 
> Is a cp -rp /usr/portage /var/portage (repeat for the others) sufficient?
> 
>> and run any old emerge command of your choice. If you left something
>> out, you'll get a message on the screen.
>>
>> You can have these directories any place you want and nothing breaks by
>> moving them around. The only change is the shipped default. So there are
>> loads of this you could worry about in IT, this ain't one of 'em
> 
> Heh... ok, thanks, but you see, I worry about *everything* (maybe that
> is one reason I rarely get bit badly doing things like this).
> 


-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com