Build custom packages versions

[luckylinux]

Hi all.
I'm new to Sabayon and this forum. Since I'm coming from a Gentoo background I hope we'll get along well

I've been using various Linux distributions over the last 8 years and I've found that Gentoo was the one that worked best for me . I've had all kind of issues with Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu (especially the latter ).

By chance I read about "Entropy" over the internet and this has caught my attention .
I've been planning to use various hosts to build "standardized" packages from Gentoo. What I love in Gentoo is not the fact that I'm able to optimize all CFLAGs / CHOSTs. What I love is that I can choose which version of which package to install on my system and being always able to downgrade or keep the currently installed version. This is why I hate so much Debian/Ubuntu/Fedora (and other distros as well, even Archlinux ). One upgrade of one package would break the system with no way to revert changes .

The USE feature of Gentoo is nice and all, but it's not my primary reason for liking it.
What I'm looking for is to create my own packages and then distribute them to my clients that can easily install these binary packages. For as strange as it may seem, I want to create generic Gentoo packages (or maybe 2: one for desktops, and one for servers) in order to achieve better stability.

I would like to know if this could be done with "Entrophy" (or maybe Paludis?) because I find portage very dumb (multiple package conflicts = only one conflict shown at the time, then modify /etc/portage/*, relaunch compile, reedit files, ... losing hours for each upgrade/update of the system - if you know what I mean).


Could "Entrophy" be used directly in Gentoo (which Sabayon is based on) in order to create these "generic" binary packages to be distributed to other PCs? Is there a program to do "intelligent package version selection" (like for instance choosing xfce-4.x for xfce and all of its dependencies)? Or at least show all conflicts at once ... I may in that case create a little script to solve all dependencies at once.
I know it seems "crazy" to be wanting to create an almost DIY Linux Distribution, but that's not really it. It's about using already existing tools while keeping control of the overall system in order to have a better system stability over upgrades.


I hope you can help me with this "issue". If you think something I described here is not clear enough, please say so. I'll then try to more explicitly describe what I'd like to do.

Thank you very much in advance for any good soul wanting to help me

[Johnny Who]

Well, well... Those binary packages are created with portage, with ebuild or emerge --buildpkg foo.
Then it is streamed through entropy repos. That is the main idea. If you want to precompile packages just do it with gentoo. Sabayon is great because it lacks the build times. As far as the "DIY distro" is concerned, you can use molecule to create a custom sabayon live image.

[Fitzcarraldo]

luckylinux, do you know that you can create binary packages in Gentoo? See the Gentoo Wiki article Binary package guide:

Next to the usual support for ebuilds, portage supports building and installing binary packages. This guide explains how to create them, how to install them and how to setup a binary package server.

If you want to install Entropy in Gentoo, see the SL Wiki article HOWTO: Install from an existing Linux system.

If you want to create your own Entropy packages and share them with others, see Community Repositories.

[luckylinux]

luckylinux, do you know that you can create binary packages in Gentoo? See the Gentoo Wiki article Binary package guide:

Next to the usual support for ebuilds, portage supports building and installing binary packages. This guide explains how to create them, how to install them and how to setup a binary package server.

I know that, still I don't really like portage's dependency solver: emerge just reports one dependency conflict each time, so I have to fix that in /etc/portage/package.[keywords/mask/unmask], relaunch emerge and wait till it throws another error, fix it and so on. If at least emerge would report all package conflicts at the same time and in a more user-understandable way.

If you want to install Entropy in Gentoo, see the SL Wiki article HOWTO: Install from an existing Linux system.

In fact I'm a bit hesitating between Entropy and Paludis. The latter seems to be popular among some Gentoo users. Entropy is more specific to Sabayon IMHO, so not many "pure" Gentoo users use it. Any comparison between the two (or anyone having tried both and be able to provide a short review)`?

If you want to create your own Entropy packages and share them with others, see Community Repositories.

I wouldn't mind sharing my binary packages (except I have a very slow uplink so I'd have to rsync to a remote server with more bandwidth). Maybe it would be better to know how to create this repositories "step-by-step" before being able to share them And - by the way - it would be on "pure" Gentoo with mostly stable packages versions - so I'm not sure if Sabayon users may actually benefit from it/them (since Sabayon's based on Gentoo's testing branch AFAIK).

[Fitzcarraldo]

The 'step by step' instructions are given in the SL Wiki: follow the link in the SL forum post to the Wiki article, and the links in that article. But, based on what you have written, it sounds to me like you need to set up your own Linux distribution with your own package manager (which could be Entropy) and its own package repository. The Entropy source code is available on-line (click on the link 'Git' at the top of this page and you'll see the link in the list). I know of at least one other distribution that uses (or used to use*) Entropy as its package manager (Nova Linux). Good luck!

* Up to Nova 2.0, the distribution was based on Gentoo, but from Nova 2.1 onwards Nova is based on Ubuntu.

[luckylinux]

The 'step by step' instructions are given in the SL Wiki: follow the link in the SL forum post to the Wiki article, and the links in that article. But, based on what you have written, it sounds to me like you need to set up your own Linux distribution with your own package manager (which could be Entropy) and its own package repository. The Entropy source code is available on-line (click on the link 'Git' at the top of this page and you'll see the link in the list). I know of at least one other distribution that uses (or used to use*) Entropy as its package manager (Nova Linux). Good luck!

* Up to Nova 2.0, the distribution was based on Gentoo, but from Nova 2.1 onwards Nova is based on Ubuntu.

I would rather not create my Linux distribution if possible
Maybe I cannot express myself clearly, but I want to control the packages versions with a package manager better than emerge.
Does Entropy handle dependencies better (or at least list all dependencies-related problems) than portage/emerge?
In that case I think a Gentoo ecosystem + Entropy + Custom scripts to automate builds & control packages versions may do the trick.

[micia]

I want to control the packages versions with a package manager better than emerge.
Does Entropy handle dependencies better (or at least list all dependencies-related problems) than portage/emerge?
In that case I think a Gentoo ecosystem + Entropy + Custom scripts to automate builds & control packages versions may do the trick.

In my personal opinion, entropy handles dependencies and conflicts in a much better and automated way than portage, I don't think it is really "better" than portage, it is just the fact that being a binary package manager, such issues can be solved with less user intervention.

I think if you want to use entropy, using a Gentoo ecosystem and custom scripts plus entropy is like reinventing the wheel, you could just use entropy and eit (provided by the entropy-server-tools package) and build your own repository, eit is supposed to do exactly what you are trying to do.
A minimal Sabayon installation (maybe a CoreCDX) would be perfect for you.

Also there shouldn't be anything wrong with pure Gentoo users, Sabayon is 100% Gentoo compatible, entropy uses portage under the hood (and it is in fact 100% compatible with it).