[gentoo-user] Re: Profile listings

[James <wireless@tampabay.rr.com>]

Bruce Schultz <brulzki <at> gmail.com> writes:


> Note that default/linux/arm/13.0/armv7a profile is building on the 
> arch/arm/armv7a (what you searched against).


I think all possible profiles for each and every type of gentoo install
should either be readily available on any installed gentoo system, or
on the net or otherwise easy to parse.


> As I understand it, the profiles in arch/arm don't contain any packages
files, so there's no  <at> system packages to list (as you found). I presume
that the arch/arm/... profiles are intended to define compiler flags etc for
cpu variants, and are used as a basis of a more complete profile (such as
default/linux/arm/13.0/armv7a). If you look through
/usr/portage/profiles/profiles.desc, you see the list of all profiles which
would be selectable through 'eselect profile', and I don't find and arch/...
profiles listed in there.


Correct. It's an inconsistent mess, imho. Being able to readily parse
the packages on a given (arch/processor/profile) install would be a keen
tool before making hardware purchases. Embedded to full distro are blurring
the landscape, particularly as arm64 emerges. Also, my cluster build work is
surprisingly revealing that HPC and general prupose clusters are best build
on bare metal or embedded linux systems, particularly but not limited to
performance gains. Gentoo use to "king" in the embedded linux space
and it's an odd (for sure) reality that building clusters, clouds or data
centers on embedded linux is moving forward at a very rapid pace.

I certainly do not wish to alienate or detract from the excellent work our
dev community has achieved. But, embedded (gentoo) linux and cluster/cloud
computing could easily put gentoo on top of the heap again. Surely gentoo is
uniquely positioned to build clusters that are not on top of 'bloatware'!

> Hope that helps...
> Bruce

YES, and I appreciated every comment!


later,
James