On 12/13/2011 08:45 AM, Jacob Carlborg wrote: > On 2011-12-13 14:04, Chad J wrote: >> >> OK, cool. I should probably mention some of the things I like about >> portage (off the top of my head), incase it helps: >> >> - The world file: A list of all packages that the /user/ elected to >> install. It does not contain dependencies. It is the top level. > > That might be a good idea. I had only planned to list all installed > packages. > >> - use-flags: Flags/keywords associated with packages that allow you to >> turn specific features within packages on and off. > > I currently have no plans of configurable packages. Either the complete > package is installed or nothing is installed. >
Would you allow others to implement this, or somehow be open to it in the future? Of course, I can definitely understand not wanting to handle this right now, due to scope creep. >> - Stability levels: Portage has a notion of unstable/untested or >> "hardmasked" packages at one level, slightly unstable or >> architecture-specific glitchiness at another level ("keyworded"), and >> completely stable at another. > > Orbit uses Semantic Versioning: http://semver.org/ > I'll read that when I get a bit of time. >> Things I don't like about portage: >> - The portage tree doesn't keep enough old versions around sometimes. > > I have no plans of removing old packages as long as it doesn't cause any > problems. > Nice. Thanks. >> - People who write crappy ebuilds or mark things stable when they mess >> up my system. The quality control used to be better. >> (It's still my favorite package manager by a wide margin.) > > This seems hard to avoid and I don't know what can be done about it. > Maintainers being more conservative, I suspect. It's not too bad in Portage, and mostly happens on super large projects with many packages, like KDE. The bread-and-butter linux stuff (kernel, compilers, small apps, drivers, etc) all tends to work out fine. It can also be mitigated a lot by having older versions around. I can easily avoid this by reverting to an earlier version of my system... except I can't sometimes. In a production environment I would probably keep all versions of my stuff packaged locally.