Well, I saw you mention Chinstrap.
The problem as Karl explained is metadata and consistency. Gentoo doesn't automatically become a good distribution for binaries just because we have binares. There is much more to something like ubuntu or fedora for that. ( Yes, I'm duly impressed, mostly by the ubuntu folks, who actually manage to do something good out of Debian without going inane. The question is if they'll manage to continue, or if the current set of incompabilities will just grow. )
However, Chinstrap deals with part of this. Providing up-to-date (well, until now) packages matching a default set of USE flags.
However, this doesn't match 100% with many users systems. A perfect example is LDAP. Fex. try : USE="-ldap" emerge pwlib. Then install a binary gnomemeeting.
Watch the explosions tickle off in the distance. Gnomemeeting depends on pwlib with USE="ldap" .... But this cannot be resolved, due to missing Metadata.
Yes, I strongly think that we need a tracking for that sort of thing, as a first measure. There are more things we need, but.... ;)
However, I've worked quite a lot with designing distributions lately, and I can say that we -can- probably make something decent out of Gentoo as well when it comes to this. The question is, how to make it without removing the things that are good about Gentoo?
Now, I'm off from this apartment, to my new one, where I have no network. I'll be in Germany for a week soon ( WGT, here I come! ) And after that there will still be some issues with getting an ISP hookup. However, I'll be back.
Posted by spider at May 6, 2005 10:53 PM