Il y a 20 heures, Ludovic Courtès écrivit : > Amirouche Boubekki skribis: > > > What about the possiblity to use overlays ? > > Could you elaborate? > > I hear this comes from the Gentoo jargon, but I’m not sure what > that means. I like the idea. I'll try to elaborate myself, as a Gentoo user for years ;-) I describe them from my own experience, official documentation can be found there [1] In Gentoo, ebuilds (the files that specify how to build a package from source) are stored in the "portage tree", which is the official repository. The tree consists of directories, one per category, plus one sub-directory par package, where package directories contains one or more ebuilds, one ebuild per package version. (plus some additional files, like patches.) "Portage" (the tool used to install packages from source, through the "emerge" command) looks for ebuild in that directory, but it can also looks from other directories which follow the same structure, those directories are called "overlays", as they can mask packages from the official tree, but also extend it. They are plenty of overlays usage: experimental packages, user-contributed packages, locally used packages for testing purposes… However, overlay create new concerns. First, priority of overlays, if two provide the same package-version combination, which one to choose? If Overlay A provide Package P, which depends on Library L, not in Overlay A but in the "base" repository, and that Overlay B provide a newer version of Library L, which L to choose? Handling build failure of packages using overlays can be quite tricky too. ;-) And last, how and where to "centralize" overlays, in order to give user a tool to easily add, remove, update overlays. 1. http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/overlays/userguide.xml -- Cyprien/Fulax