On Mon, Nov 23, 2009 at 02:49:19PM +0100, Heiko Baums wrote: > Am Mon, 23 Nov 2009 11:17:13 -0200 > schrieb André Ramaciotti da Silva <andre.ramaciotti@xxxxxxxxx>: > > > I don't want to flame, but that's why I recently moved to Gentoo. > > Arch is one of the best distros I've used, but when you use a > > (primarily) binary distro, the number of choices you have is reduced. > > > > I don't blame the devs, though. They must make packages that appeal > > to a large number of users and Arch ends up with packages with a big > > number of dependencies. If you think about it, using a little bit > > more of disk space isn't a big problem compared to the problem some > > people would have if the default packages weren't compiled with these > > extra dependencies, because they would have to compile their own > > packages, defeating the reason to use a binary-based distro. > > > > I know, Arch has ABS, which is a great improvement compared to others > > binary-based distros, but it's still not perfect. Pacman doens't look > > for custom PKGBUILDs and automatically create the new packages based > > on them, and I guess it won't. Pacman wasn't meant to do that. > > > > You can make scripts based on pacman and ABS that will do this (I've > > made one shortly before changing distros), but then I realised I > > don't know all the ./configure options a package has, and I find > > documentation on this a little scarce. Using the 'USE' flags with > > emerge is much simpler in this aspect. > > I don't think that you will stay too long with Gentoo. ;-) > > It is right that you can reduce the dependencies a bit and that you are > more flexible by setting USE flags. As far as I recall the difference > between Gentoo and Arch Linux regarding the disk space is not > significant if there's a difference at all, but you will need a lot more > temporary disk space for compiling and it takes several days to compile > the whole system and every update takes much longer than on Arch Linux. > So I think "wasting" a bit disk space for dependencies which aren't > needed is better than wasting too much time for compiling the whole > system. That's why I switched from Gentoo to Arch Linux a while ago. On > Arch Linux you still have the same control over the installed packages > as you have on Gentoo. Don't overvalue the USE flags. > > There's optdepends to reduce the dependencies a bit as long as a > dependency can be made optionally. Otherwise more comfort for the common > users is better I think. > > And pacman and ABS are good as they are. There's still the > NoUpgrade option in pacman.conf if you build a package from ABS. > > Heiko I know, I know, they always come back. :P My Arch installation is still in my HD, just in case. About disk usage, don't forget that arch keeps a cache of downloaded packages. So I don't think Gentoo is in disadvantage here. My installation uses 1GB less than Arch (both have basically the same packages). It may not sound like a lot, thinking of the size most HD have nowadays, but it's a 20% improvement. I don't think compiling takes that much. If you're in a hurry, then yes, it'll seem like forever. I installed in a weekend, basically the same time I took to install Arch (because I install some packages, then I remember of others, then others...). But it wasn't 48h compiling, it was way, way less. I agree that with Arch you still have control over your packages, but USE flags make it easier. Somebody already went into the ./configure of all packages and put it in an easier way to do it. If programs could talk, emerge would be like: - I want my mplayer with samba and lirc support. - OK, I'll configure it this way, but then you also need to install this and this packages. While pacman would be something like: - I want my mplayer without samba support. - Wakka wakka wakka. Make a custom PKGBUILD then, wakka wakka. And finally, yes, there are optdeps, but pacman don't handle them as nicely it handles obligatory dependencies. If I install an optdep as an explicit installed package, when I uninstall the other package, the optdep will stay in my system. If I install it as a dependency, pacman will list it as an unnecessary dependency when I run pacman -Qdt. Andre
