Extending portage so emerge can print URLs to source files

[salimma]

On the Cheapbytes announcement possibilites for future CD offerings are mentioned, specifically:

- Source CDs
- Binary CDs

While the latter might be a bit problematic due to the proliferation of architectures supported by Gentoo (after all, a CPU that supports different optimizations can rightly be considered a separate architecture when it comes to optimized packages), the former would be invaluable for people will slow connections but fast computers (believe me, it's quite common outside broadband-soaked countries!)

It would be on the line of the *BSDs, which is what Portage is partly based upon after all (apart from providing the sources instead of precompiled packages).

A snag is that after talking to some users I gathered (haven't installed Gentoo myself due to this problem) that it is currently impossible to extract the URLs to needed sources automatically.

If Portage is updated so that we can have an option, say, 'emerge --print-url' to print the URL instead of fetching the sources, this would both allow generating sources CDs or allow people who have access to faster connections elsewhere to install Gentoo from the base ISO, print the list of files they need and download it elsewhere (or scrounge it from other distros' source CDs perhaps)

My twopence - what do people think? I'd *really* love to give Gentoo a try, and sooner rather than later

Regards,

Michel
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Michel

[salimma]

Right, found the gentoo-sources mirror of source files at iBiblio. And linked from the Portage manual too, heh. Guess I was not looking hard enough :p

The topic is still valid, though. Would be nice to be able to generate the minimum list of files to download to have, say, xmms running with gnome support.

Regards,
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Michel