Re: [gentoo-user] Things that can be improved

["Lord Sauron" <lordsauronthegreat@gmail.com>]

On 7/7/06, Zac Medico <zmedico@gentoo.org> wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Lord Sauron wrote:
> > My personal gripe is how slow emerge is on just plain old emerge-ish
> > things.  That we have to use things like eix to search is pathetic.
> > This NEVER happened in Debian.
>
> emerge/portage has lots of room for improvement.  Lots of the code is quite messy and it has been largely neglected because most people simply refuse to do much work on such a mess.  However, since I've joined the project, I've been doing doing lots of work to clean up this code that most people won't touch.  It's getting better, slowly but surely.

Yes, it does.  However, portage aside, it lacks something like
aptitude to really fill in the loose ends.

> There are so many technical issues that remain to be solved in portage that it's difficult to justify spending time on problems that have already been solved in one way or another.  There many tools in existence that already do the search part pretty well.  Lots of other things still need fixing...

Yeah.  Portage works, however, I think it's really in need of a large
overhaul.  If what you're saying is true, and it's really just a load
of scripts, then I really would HIGHLY suggest that you consider
beginning to make smaller helper applications in C and stuff to speed
things up.  Right now it does have one thing that I have to say is
better than Debian...  once you get used to it:  package masking.

That is something that is really quite nifty that debian lacks, but I
wouldn't say is a killer app.  I'll be on Gentoo for one reason only:
I'm obcessed with learning more about Linux, no matter how much
trouble that means I have to get myself into ; )

Perhaps if I ever become good enough at Linux and programming I'll
feel brave enough to try and help with the Portage problem...  It's
definitely a idea I'm beginning to entertain.  I may just start
looking through the sources.  Who knows?  With what limited skill I
have I may be able to cook up some of those helper applications to
speed things up!

Scripts are great, but they aren't for whole applications.  Yes, that
would be a quotable.

-- 
========== GCv3.12 ==========
GCS d-(++) s+: a? C++ UL+>++++ P+
L++ E--- W+(+++) N++ o? K? w--- O? M+
V? PS- PE+ Y-(--) PGP- t+++ 5? X R tv-- b+
                DI+++ D+ G e* h- !r !y
========= END GCv3.12 ========
-- 
gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list