Like I heard many people saying, I really like gentoo very much but sometimes I just one this package real quick. For that, a Binary Packages Repository (BPR) would be quite appreciated.
There was the Chinstrap Project that unfortunately being abandoned. I think it is very sad such a project is abandoned. There is also klik which actually is VERY GOOD, but aimed for (cross-distrib) desktop use, not as a core system solution. I think gentoo needs something on its own to his image.
There has been discussion about it before, and apparently the problem with binary distribution is that it breaks and needs to be reinstalled. My personal problem with Binary package distribution just as Mandrake or SuSE is package availability. some and few packages that I want are not available. and/or you need to manage a list of download sources, which is a pain in the butt. Then it finally comes down to compiling it from source except that it won't be registered in your system database. which I don't like. I want everything and every-file to be registered, removable and manageable.
That is why I like gentoo. every single packages are there. even proprietary stuff like CrossOver. The Gentoo portage won't be able to download it, because its paid software. but if you download it, put the file in your distfiles directory. it will check the digest and record this package into your system package database. THAT is GOOOOD.
What I am thinking is having emerge being modified to upload packages after the compilation is done. so everyone in the world would be uploading package unless already found, in which case it would have got downloaded. So If found, download, if not, compile and upload.
In order to keep system stability, I'm not sure how many duplicates of the packages we should need to store. I would be thinking....
http://gentoo.packages.example.com/gentoo/[arch]/[CHOST]/[gcc version]/[glibc version]/[package group]/[package name]/[package version]/file
that might become crazy, but it might be what it needs. even USE flags might have to be thrown in there.
I'm not sure how would be best to organize the use flags. but one way which would not be human browsable but flexible would be to assign a unique bit-flag to every USE flags. just like filesystem permission, where r-x becomes 5 the total would become a huge number but it would not matter I think.
so it might become something like
http://gentoo.packages.example.com/gentoo/x86/i686-pc-linux-gnu/gcc4.1.1/glibc2.4/kde-base/kdebase/3.5.5/kdebase-3.5.5.gentoo-bin.tgz
that would required a lot of space and bandwidth I would guess, but I think its worth the try. problems can be fix in time.
opinion?
