4 ms·

Have you ever had to work with a piece of software, where, since you were not using Gentoo or something, your package manager had a very old package and had to

by aclsid 9y ago

Have you ever had to work with a piece of software, where, since you were not using Gentoo or something, your package manager had a very old package and had to install a new version from source? I remember around 1999 some sysadmins would say, create your own packages from source stuff that you need. Given the current filesystem, permissions, etc. creating your own stuff is not for the faint of heart. So what you did was search the web in hopes somebody had done it for you. Fast forward to recent times, if you had to do devops where PHP was involved in some way, you would have felt remi was a guy that should be receiving free beer. Explain why we have arrived to that sort of situations. Luckily nowadays, the world seems to have centered around Ubuntu, from Docker to whatnot, which makes everybody target Ubuntu at least. But to this day, I'm still a very fond user of Gentoo, even if the compile everything from source approach is a bit crazy, and its latest reincarnation, Funtoo, precisely because it gives me a machine that has everything I need when the time comes to deal with "the package not in my package manager" TM.

SwellJoe 9y ago
Sure, I remember 1999 (and I've built my own packages thousands of times since then, and still do a couple times a week, though mostly for my own software for distribution). I understand the pain that older packages sometimes cause, but I think the notion that we should throw away good package management in exchange for...I'm not sure what exactly you're suggesting this new scheme provides, is a good trade. Gentoo is not a realistic option for most situations where you need stability over some length of time. I looked over GoboLinux, and I see they offer multiple versions of packages, and that's cool and all. There are repos that do the same for CentOS/RHEL; Software Collections Library is a very good one that is sponsored by Red Hat. And, there's stuff like Flatpak coming down the pike which allows packages to be bundled up in a container with everything it needs. One could argue that GoboLinux foresaw these needs (it's been around since 2002, apparently) and came up with a partial solution to the problem. I can't argue with that. But, it was, IMHO, so partial that it wasn't worth the trade. I'm not sure containers-as-packages are worth the trade in some cases, either, but it seems inevitable. So, I'm embracing it in my own work. It's definitely got some advantages. And, yes, Gentoo is crazy.

by aclsid 9y ago

SwellJoe 9y ago

Sure, I remember 1999 (and I've built my own packages thousands of times since then, and still do a couple times a week, though mostly for my own software for distribution). I understand the pain that older packages sometimes cause, but I think the notion that we should throw away good package management in exchange for...I'm not sure what exactly you're suggesting this new scheme provides, is a good trade. Gentoo is not a realistic option for most situations where you need stability over some length of time. I looked over GoboLinux, and I see they offer multiple versions of packages, and that's cool and all. There are repos that do the same for CentOS/RHEL; Software Collections Library is a very good one that is sponsored by Red Hat. And, there's stuff like Flatpak coming down the pike which allows packages to be bundled up in a container with everything it needs. One could argue that GoboLinux foresaw these needs (it's been around since 2002, apparently) and came up with a partial solution to the problem. I can't argue with that. But, it was, IMHO, so partial that it wasn't worth the trade. I'm not sure containers-as-packages are worth the trade in some cases, either, but it seems inevitable. So, I'm embracing it in my own work. It's definitely got some advantages. And, yes, Gentoo is crazy.