[ snips ] On Sat, 07 Dec 2002 12:52:09 -0500 "Brett I. Holcomb" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I had some time yesterday and spent it browsing the Gentoo web site > and came up with a question about the updates.
> how is the availablity of packages for Gentoo? As far as distros go, Gentoo has one of the largest, continuously updated set of packages that I am aware of. Unlike RH (and others) Gentoo does not merely offer security updates and warnings and gnu/linux core packages. New versions of all the popular packages come out very rapidly after release of the new version. New at the 1.4+ release level is the ability to select stable (ie fully tested) or development/experimental packages. > What do you do if a package is not available in the Gentoo ports > system? > Several choices: 1) If you like RPM, nothing prevents you from using it on gentoo (the disadvantages are multiple package databases and the fact that nobody is tailoring RPMs specifically for Gentoo). You could also tinker with the debian tools to install debian packages, if you feel adventuresome. 2) Download the tarball (or a binary package) and install it yourself. Keeping track of hand-installed packages may be troublesome unless you use something like InstallWatch. All you're doing here is a stand alone version of what emerge/ebuild does for you in an automated fashion. You can also record what you've done in the portage system, so that subsequent ebuilds will be aware of the package. 3) Join the gentoo user groups (do this anyway) and request that someone make an ebuild for the package. This isn't very quick, but some of the developers are quite responsive. 4) Do a little RTFM on the gentoo site and learn to generate an ebuild yourself (do this in combination with 2 above) - not much more difficult than working with SRPMs, for example. Then you can offer up the ebuild for general use and others will benefit. -- Collins Richey - Denver Area Gentoo 1.4 system _______________________________________________ Linux-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe/Suspend/Etc -> http://www.linux-sxs.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-users
