[SOLVED] Gentoo's portage on Linux comparable to MacPorts?

Message

njsr · Post by **njsr** » Mon Jul 22, 2013 5:13 pm

[/quote]Hi,

I am using Linux since 20 years now, but since about 3 years I am more busy on Mac OS X...

... but I am considering switching back completely into Linux world!!

On my iMac I made use of MacPorts, which seems to be in principle somewhat similar to Gentoo in the way it distributes/installs the software.
What I escpecially like about MacPorts is that it has a very active developer base which always tries to keep all their ports very close to bleeding egde but nevertheless stable. MacPorts makes use of so called Portfiles which describe how specific software packages have to be build. I figure that this is very similar to what emerge does. Only very recently MacPorts introduced buildbots which pre-build binary packages to be distributed to the users, but for a long time everyone had to build everything on their machines...

That is why I am not scared off by building a complete system on my machine(s)!

My question is now: Is gentoo more oriented on bleeding edge or more on stability like Debian, or can the user actually decide him/herself which path to go?

Can I see somewhere which new commits were made to gentoo's packages in order to compare developer activity with MacPorts?

Greets,
nsjr

Post by **NeddySeagoon** » Mon Jul 22, 2013 5:55 pm

njsr,

Welcome to Gentoo.

Both Gentoo Portage and Mac Ports have a common ancestor in the BSD Ports system.

LoTeK · Post by **LoTeK** » Mon Jul 22, 2013 6:11 pm

Only very recently MacPorts introduced buildbots which pre-build binary packages to be distributed to the users, but for a long time everyone had to build everything on their machines...

How is this done? Since you are not able to get the source code?

My question is now: Is gentoo more oriented on bleeding edge or more on stability like Debian, or can the user actually decide him/herself which path to go?

You can decide what way to go. In some posts/articles I've read things like "gentoo is too bleeding edge, thats why I use debian" etc, but you can configure your system very non-bleeding edge too. since gentoo is more like a meta distribution it could be possible that a system like debian is more stable, but I wouldn't bet money on it.

On my "working, non-experimental" machine I never had a problem.

Bzub · Post by **Bzub** » Mon Jul 22, 2013 6:58 pm

check

http://packages.gentoo.org/ (only the official tree)
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/h ... t=2&chap=1
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/h ... t=2&chap=2

As stated above both have common ancestors ( - or influences whatever you prefer), but the differences as I see it is the configuration.
I' m just using my mac for less than a year but as far as I can know the main functionality is very similar - but - with gentoo portage you'll need to take use flags into account. Usually new gentoo users try to cram as much useflags as possible into there make.conf, resulting in dependency issues/bloated binaries. With gentoo portage you can make your resulting binaries as complete or incomplete as you want, no X => no problem, want QT instead of GTK => no problem again. You can install any version of a package you want (albeit it be supported), multiple versions of the same software next to eachother, your own versions, ... .

You should also take into account that on mac you have A) the mac OS and B) macports, while on gentoo you have portage - which can install/update/uninstall about anything - even system files/binaries.

As for the bleeding edge part, the choice is yours. You can go rock stable like debian or bleeding edges (nightly builds if you want). I find the main portage tree to be rather stable, but you can install layman to get that bleeding edge piece you really want or if all else fails you can create your own ebuilds.

njsr · Post by **njsr** » Mon Jul 22, 2013 7:33 pm

LoTeK wrote:
How is this done? Since you are not able to get the source code?
What do you mean? The source code of all MacPorts ports is accessible just like it is for gentoo's emerge.

njsr · Post by **njsr** » Mon Jul 22, 2013 7:40 pm

I tried to find the gentoo's analogous web-page to MacPorts' timeline http://trac.macports.org/timeline...

There is http://sources.gentoo.org/gitweb/, but that's not it, I guess.

So, http://packages.gentoo.org seems more like it, but I can't figure out how to see a time line of the most recent changes to gentoo's packages...

Post by **NeddySeagoon** » Mon Jul 22, 2013 8:13 pm

njsr,

Do not confuse the packages themselves with the ebuilds that describe how to build the packages.

The packages are as close to $UPSTREAM as possible. Gentoo does not have the resources to carry a large gentoo patch set.

Are you looking for the update history of the packages, the ebuilds, or even portage itself?

njsr · Post by **njsr** » Mon Jul 22, 2013 8:43 pm

Are you saying that the packages stay as close as possible to upstream on their own, i.e. without any maintainer intervention?

(I mean the package history. Well, the ebuilds history would also be interesting.)

Post by **John R. Graham** » Mon Jul 22, 2013 9:16 pm

It's more accurate to say that packages only deviate from upstream through maintainer intervention, which the maintainers try to avoid. Where else would the changes come from?

The whole history of all the ebuilds (i.e., the Portage tree) is in version control, described here. Browse to your heart's content.

- John

njsr · Post by **njsr** » Mon Jul 22, 2013 9:35 pm

John R. Graham wrote:The whole history of all the ebuilds (i.e., the Portage tree) is in version control

Where exactly do I find the ebuilds? Which repo/folder would that be?

There is a lot to browse and the presence of three version control systems at once is irritating too.

Post by **John R. Graham** » Mon Jul 22, 2013 10:15 pm

Well, we wouldn't want that.

They're in CVS under gentoo-x86.

- John

njsr · Post by **njsr** » Tue Jul 23, 2013 5:10 am

Thanks.

I am surprised to see CVS still in such a core role.

Any plans to switch something more modern like e.g. git, or is it intentional that gentoo stuck with good old CVS?

BTW, where is the x86_64 install ISO?

Post by **John R. Graham** » Tue Jul 23, 2013 10:24 am

It's right there, but it's called amd64 in Gentoo, as AMD invented the 64-bit extensions to the x86 architecture.

- John

steveL · Post by **steveL** » Tue Jul 23, 2013 3:33 pm

Can you mark this [solved] by editing the original post title?

The answer is: yes, only Gentoo is a lot better.

The whys and wherefores, and details of things like infrastructure and its history you can find out on your own time, as you explore Gentoo. It's all available from the homepage, including mailing-list archives and the IRC channels such as #gentoo-chat.

njsr · Post by **njsr** » Tue Jul 23, 2013 6:26 pm

Thanks to everyone who replied to my n00by questions!

I would have never expected x86_64 below amd64. That was a great hint. (BTW, something I couldn't find in the docs so readily which is why I asked it on this thread!)

GFCCAE6xF · Post by **GFCCAE6xF** » Tue Jul 23, 2013 7:09 pm

njsr wrote:I would have never expected x86_64 below amd64.

It can be a little confusing to newcomers, especially when you own a 64bit Intel CPU. I've also seen a few people mistake IA64 for amd(x86_)64, although luckily they asked about it first