Hello,

Gentoo is a source based distro. And it has a great feature. Instead of downloading whole tarball with new version of one's lovely project, one can retrieve a so called delta (a kind of patch). It is many times less in size.

SuSe is RPM based distro. Meantime it has capability of updating packages with deltas too!

AFAIK Gentoo provides deltas for sources only (but one can download binary packages too). I do not prefer sources so the thing in SuSe looks attractive to me very and very much.

The time I did not know this, I thought Debian has a best package system. Now I am in doubt.

Don't anyone know, whether Debian going to provide deltas?

What do you think Debian packaging lacks for?

interested in any opinion

Well it's not like Gentoo's got deltas for everything. Deltas are not common, and are only provided for the large packages (like kde or gcc and usually between gentoo revisions of the same package).

When it comes to package-managers I stick with portage all the way. And it's not only that you can compile stuff from source, it's the fact that it's bleeding edge. Lately, I have been having problems with just about every non-source distro I've tried. The update system sucks just about everywhere, for different reasons, and usually you can only use packages that you do not compile yourself. Anytime I try to compile a little wearder package that's not in the tree I get a whack on the head, while in Portage everything seems to just work. Some package broke because of a library upgrade? No panic, just recompile the package. If that happens on some other distro (vector, in my case) that usually means you need to downgrade the library, which in turn means you cannot run something else. Stupid huh?

Compiling everything may seem like a hastle and unnecessary wait at first, but when you compare it with the disadvantages... I choose gentoo any day. But I'm just one guy.

Actually I do not wanna argue advantages of the source-based systems. The aim of post is to discuss, what things could enhance packaging in the Debian either comparatively to others or without it.

Atom, portages are simply nonprecompiled packages? If it so, in quality it is like any binary package management. It follows dependencies, pre and post installing scripts and more.

Actually, they are named ebuilds.
No, they are not simply non-precompiled packages, but are instead instructions how to install and compile a specific package. They do handle pre- and post-install scripting etc. but they also configure the package for the current state of your system and compile the package against installed libraries, dynamically linking them to existing .so.x-es. If a .so dissapears because of a library upgrade, the programs that were compiled against it sease to function. That's when revdep-rebuild comes in and searches for such programs, and recompiles them against the new so.x+1. Thus, all programs are compiled for the same system and the system remains consistent and works.

This allows for bleeding-edge distribution of programs, because the program need not be tested to work with a few different systems first, but just compiled against existing stuff. And it usually works.

This also allows the concept of use-flags: If a user wants to have php with support for gd, berkdb, mysql, but not postgresql, how are you going to provide a precompiled package for that? But because packages are compiled on the end-users machine, this can be done.

Please note that this is not meant to be a flamewar, and that I have chosen gentoo mostly because of this flexibility, which apt-get lacks.

it would just be more more thing to wait for. They have enough work and it works great as is.

I used gentoo for well over a year, and it was the only OS on my machine. Now, I have since switched to debian, and the binary packages have won me over.

Just because I have switched, doesn't mean I don't like gentoo. Portage is great, and I love the reverse dependency checking (depclean), but if you can't get your system like you like it, and leave it alone, Gentoo will consume you and your life.

Apt can also compile from source. It doesn't use "USE" flags, but all that does is tell the compiler what options to compile the source in the tarball with. With the binary package management, you don't have the overhead of all of the developement libraries, package tarballs, etc... In source packages, you can customize it exactly the way you want it, and you have the option to recompile it with different options.

Most people don't realize that most of the features of portage and Gentoo in general are just Gentoo's frontends to various things. The USE flag system is just a frontend to compiler options, rc-update is just a frontend to creating symlinks to startup scripts, etc... Once you realize that every distro can do these things (meaning they aren't gentoo specific, just the way of doing it is) then you can branch out and learn the other ways of doing it. If I wouldn't have spent the long while on Gentoo, I wouldn't know what I was doing now. It taught me a lot. Now I am efficient on Debian and the Debian way of things, and I also know a lot about the Gentoo way of doing things. They both produce the same result, but go about it in different ways.

Neither one is really better, they both offer something different. My debian sid setup is just as up to date as Gentoo ~x86.

Once you learn Apt like you know Portage (which you may, I don't know, this is just my experience) then you really come to appreciate how flexible it really is. I never took the time to look at it until I decided that Gentoo was taking up too much of my time (I couldn't stop tweaking, so of course I couldn't leave it alone). Gentoo is addicting, and as we speak I am installing it in a virtual machine so I can just play.

I say just take a bunch of the distros and try them out for about 2 weeks at a time, to really get the feel for which one grabs you. Then, pick the one you liked the most.