31–40 of 85 posts
What's this in reference to?
I think it's time to use an LLM to rewrite portage in C. Might be one of my next projects. Should not take long and the result will be easy to deterministically test side by side.
Switch to using a git backend and portage will fly fast enough. tank ~ # time emerge --sync * Using keys from /usr/share/openpgp-keys/gentoo-release.asc emerge --sync 3.18s user 5.15s system 67% cpu 12.324 total https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Portage_with_Git
Never used Gentoo, but what is its advantages over, say, Guix? I don't actually use guix or nix as a daily driver, although one year ago I did install Guix on a separate partition of my desktop PC and I use nix via Home manager to install various cli-based tools.
The main selling point is that you compile out any features you are not using, on a global level. Want to remove PulseAudio? Add -pulseaudio to the USE flags and rebuild. Prefer GnuTLS over OpenSSL? Declare it in make.conf and packages that support either will only use your choice. That's unique to the Gentoo model and gives a fine-tuned system with virtually zero bloat. Other distros inevitably pull in dependencies…
The Gentoo profiles mentioned in another comment is what still allows the system to have packages compiled with a consistent subset of things.
I have fond memories of spending long nights recompiling with new flags to try and get slightly better FPS in games... this was over 25 years ago so not in the proton heyday we have now. These days I'm a fair bit lazier, throw Fedora on and use it happily. update frequently and it almost never causes me any issues. The Gentoo Forums were a super fun and friendly place back then, I hope they haven't lost that spirit.
And still benefit from packages/system being smaller/faster because they are not built to cater for all possibilities.
And you can still override options (use flags) and compile some things exactly as you want/need them.
Gentoo veterans should remember this one: https://www.shlomifish.org/humour/by-others/funroll-loops/Ge...
Gentoo is great! You can just drop a patch into a folder, and every time you re/install or upgrade a package, it'll get applied! You know that weird thing that bothers you in that specific software? That random popup when you start it? That additional, unneeded "ok" prompt? That donation-begging screen? That stupid checkmark checked on/off by default when it should be off/on instead? Well, make a patch to fix it, dro…
There's already tooling for using say .deb or golang packages - but still having them installed as proper Gentoo/portage ones.
PS. Tek sada videh korisničko
Gentoo is great! You can just drop a patch into a folder, and every time you re/install or upgrade a package, it'll get applied! You know that weird thing that bothers you in that specific software? That random popup when you start it? That additional, unneeded "ok" prompt? That donation-begging screen? That stupid checkmark checked on/off by default when it should be off/on instead? Well, make a patch to fix it, dro…
I think it's time to use an LLM to rewrite portage in C. Might be one of my next projects. Should not take long and the result will be easy to deterministically test side by side.
Switch to using a git backend and portage will fly fast enough. tank ~ # time emerge --sync * Using keys from /usr/share/openpgp-keys/gentoo-release.asc emerge --sync 3.18s user 5.15s system 67% cpu 12.324 total https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Portage_with_Git
I didn't realize how strict they were against LLMs. Codex has really helped my fix and tighten up my AUR PKGBUILDs. I was thinking about trying Gentoo in the future, but not being able to contribute because I use LLMs in my workflow sucks.
If you're so good at it that they can't tell, does it matter?