Hi!

I've read about Arch, that it's philosophy is keeping the system simple, which includes, that they don't patch software unless it's really necessary, they keep it the way the developer written the source code. I think it's a good idea, but it involves, that compatibility can break easily in an Arch system.
I haven't found anything related to this about Gentoo. So my question is: is this the same with gentoo, they don't change the sources of programs? My feeling it's not, because a lot of time needed for packages to appear in portage after their release. Is "Patching" the reason why?
I'm also interested in your opinion about this patching-nopatching philosophy.

Short answer: No, patching isn't why.

Gentoo is about optimization. It lets you set how you want your programs built, what extra functions you want built, all according to the specs you decide.

The reason it takes time to show up in portage is usually testing, the making of the ebuild, and the verifying of needed dependencies. Plus it's volunteers that tend to this, so some programs may take longer than others due to popularity.

I wrote up a short comparison a while back : http://mrchilly.net/?q=node/21
and I recommend the distro's about pages: http://www.gentoo.org/main/en/about.xml http://www.archlinux.org/about/

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iirc Gentoo does patch quite a few packages, but it goes through testing, unstable, and stable phases.

In my opinion, patching is a Bad Thing in general with a few exceptions such as enabling/disabling features or maybe correcting a typo in a Makefile. Patching that goes much beyond this (such as bugfixes) should be done by upstream since they should know how to fix a problem without introducing more bugs into the program as well as pushing patches out to everyone else instead of just fixing functionality in a single distro.

I believe it is common practice for most all distros to have certain distro-specific patches. Also, if their patches fix a problem in the program, it is common practice and courtesy to turn them in to the upstream maintainers. THis is not a gentoo specific scenario

It maybe curtious to send the patches upstream, but I would like to see something showing how often this works or, more importantly, how often said patches are merged (and reasons why they are rejected)

Ok, thanks.
But than there is a thing I don't understand. If Arch is the one that patches less of its packages, then why it is the distro that breaks compatibility more easily with softwares not included in the distro? It's not logical for me.