Linux.com :: how does portage work???

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r22003 Joined: Feb 04, 2009 Posts: 10 Other Topics	Posted Feb 13, 2009 at 7:04:27 PM Subject: how does portage work??? i was wondering how portage works on a gentoo system. just curious as how it compares to rpm or deb based systems. also i can't d/l the dvd for sabayon which i think would be a good shot at me to see this gentoo based portage system. thanks for the advice.
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Reed Joined Feb 07, 2008 Posts: 758 Other Topics	Posted: Feb 13, 2009 7:45:49 PM Subject: Re: how does portage work??? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portage_(software) http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml?part=2&chap=1 The biggest difference between deb or rpm systems, is probably that portage uses a shell script that downloads and compiles the software from source, rather than installing a binary package. As such, you can specify different features you'd like to include or exclude based on your needs, and, since it's compiled for your system, you should in theory get some performance boost. Although with most programs on a modern system, the increase isn't likely to be very significant. It can also take a very long time to compile a large program from source. Another option is Arch Linux, http://www.archlinux.org/, which primarily uses binary packages, but also has the option to use their Arch Build Tree to compile from source through a PKGBUILD script, similar to Gentoo's ebuild scripts. There is also the Arch Users Repository, which is a collection of unofficial PKGBUILDs created by the community. [Modified by: Reed on February 13, 2009 02:46 PM]
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FieserKiller Joined Jan 12, 2009 Posts: 25 Other Topics	Posted: Feb 13, 2009 8:44:02 PM Subject: how does portage work??? yeah, portage ebuilds are basically shell scripts (mostly just defining some dependencies and setting some variables like version, licence, forbidden optimization flags for gcc, download path, etc). Portage then downloads and untars the sources and runs configure,make & make install. Packages which can be configured on build time (eg. to remove/add features, such as optional codec support for media players, or gui frontends in qt/gtk) are handled by so called use-flags which are simple keywords you can set or unset. When finished portage merges the compiled result into the system watching for filename collisions (colliding config files mostly on updates) and lets you merge that files interactively.
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gimcrack Joined Jan 25, 2009 Posts: 6 Other Topics	Posted: Feb 15, 2009 4:11:45 AM Subject: Re: how does portage work??? I use Sabayon for a while. Only thing I didn't like about it. That I think portage is much slower then using deb. So I'm a much of a debian distro user. I stay away from any Gentoo distro. That's just my two cent worth.
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Rubberman Joined Jul 30, 2007 Posts: 944 Location:40 miles west of Chicago Other Topics	Posted: Feb 16, 2009 5:20:56 AM Subject: how does portage work??? Of course portage is slower than deb, or yum, or synaptic (apt-get). Those install already-built binaries whereas portage does a complete build of the software before installing it. However, if it builds successfully, you know that it is built specifically to run in your system. Sometimes real fast is almost as good as real time. Remember, Google is your friend!
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Crash-Override Joined Feb 20, 2009 Posts: 3 Location:Dallas, TX Other Topics	Posted: Feb 20, 2009 6:05:52 PM Subject: how does portage work??? its just like yum and apt-get except it compiles from source instead of untarballing/unrpming the binariesm, I like it HACKERS OF THE WORLD UNITE!
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