Idea: gentoo mer core system build overlay
asked 2014-01-12 13:04:12 +0200
The idea is for the Mer core specific components of Sailfish to be packaged up into ebuilds and distributed in a Mer Gentoo Overlay.
The target audience for this idea are meta-system builders, application developers and the Mer/Sailfish Team. I imagine by that probably a lot of the early adopters.
To briefly advocate Gentoo as a Meta-distribution and that is its the first advantage. Being a meta-distribution will give the user the choice system logger, cron demon and all sorts of other system tools. Gentoo also has native support for Licensing within its package management so open source and closed can live happily along side each other.
The pros are that as a Gentoo System you are able to choose which features are for your system, build the support needed to implement them directly into your system from the kernel up. Likewise there is the ability to exclude features to streamline the system.
The cons include, this being a new and great way to brick your phone. Gentoo does have its own issues such as an update of udev last year changing the way Network Interface Cards are named. The overlay would need to be managed by some serious system builders, who know what they're doing. Some of the closed source binaries licenced to and by Jolla, may need to be distributed using the Jolla store in the traditional manner.
In conclusion, my belief is that the benefits do out weigh the cons. This is not intended for the casual user and I expect may be quite intimidating for a some of those who aren't. It would mean that the core system builders would have new tool to help design and test around different system configurations. This should not be thought of as a direct replacement for the current system design and build but perhaps an alternative.
