On Wed, Jan 21, 2015 at 9:00 AM, Sam Bishop <sam@cygnus.email> wrote: > > I don't see why it can't be all the combinations, the issue is > storage, and the storage costs could be a lot lower than expected > given how hard it is to guess.
I don't believe that binpkg filenames contain the use flag settings, and I'm not sure that given multiple copies of a binpkg with different filenames portage goes through them and figures out which ones are which. This isn't an area I have looked into seriously. However, it obviously would be a blocker for getting what you propose to work, even theoretically. I don't really see the value in having EVERY combination of use flags on call though. Practically speaking I doubt this could be done. You're talking about a LOT of combinations. However, I think it would be very useful to have a binpkg repository all the same. Perhaps have one for each of a few common profiles with the default flags. That alone would be a significant undertaking. Just about everybody who has talked about running Gentoo in a datacenter has set up a binpkg repository. They may very well deviate from the default USE flags, but for the most part they try to keep their systems identical. They would build updates as binpkg, install to a test system, and after testing deploy them to production and that would of course go quickly. I have a script I use to build binpkg nightly for the day's updates. That lets me review updates and deploy them quickly. Any rebuilds/etc still take time, but the bulk of my updates are very fast this way with minimal time spent staring at the screen. This would be another route to take if your really did need highly varied deployments. -- Rich
