You can build binary packages after successful compilation/installation (every time if you want) or only build binary package. Then you can share binary package

You can build binary packages after successful compilation/installation (every time if you want) or only build binary package. Then you can share binary packages between all hosts or have one host that is building packages for all others. You can restrict portage to only install binary packages. Doing all this can be a bit tedious, but with current computer's power it is quite fast process. You will get lean system that can be like no other - that's a curse and a blessing. Nevertheless I speak from the position of a desktop Gentoo user from the past, that recently used Gentoo for personal R&D project. It certainly is better experience than few years ago. You can install only run-time needed packages on your host or even to different directory (for chroot). One thing that I don't know how to get over is to not have development files inside binary packages. Like include files. Also I had to manually copy gcc libraries to such a chroot, because I didn't want to install whole gcc there.