On 14/03/2015 23:49, Rich Freeman wrote: > On Sun, Feb 8, 2015 at 8:32 AM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckin...@gmail.com> wrote: >> Correct. With most Linux package managers, everything is a package and >> everything has strict dependencies. You install the bits you want and >> the PM installs the bits it needs. >> >> Gentoo is one of the very few PMs that even has a concept of @system at all >> > > To be honest, I think this is one of its larger deficiencies, and it > causes many problems. > > IMHO, the only reason we have @system is that devs create dependencies > entirely by hand and most don't want to actually document what they > are. Of course, the need to build packages give Gentoo packages a > large number of build-time dependencies, but any distro that allows > packages to be built from source has to deal with this as well. > > Sure, to bootstrap anything you need to start out with something, but > that doesn't mean that you can't still track what the actual > dependency relationships are, and in any case our system set is larger > than the set of packages necessary to bootstrap the rest of the > distro. Of course, it is hard to say exactly what is and isn't > necessary for bootstrapping since we don't capture our dependencies.
That's all very true, witness the frequent bikeshedding in -dev about what should and shouldn't be in @system. It looks like a simple problem - you need a toolchain plus all supporting packages plus the minimum needed to bootstrap userland. But let's consider this: what level of chaos would arise if @system were dropped? Surely the problem of tracking all deps would get so out of hand so quickly, that @system or something equivalent would immediately be reinstated? -- Alan McKinnon alan.mckin...@gmail.com
