Re: A GNU Distribution

[Christophe Poncy]

> We want the source and binary to be closely associated,
> but whether they form one downloadable package or two
> seems like an implementation detail.  Since many people
> would rather get only the binary, I think it is more convenient
> if they are two downloadable packages rather than one.
>
> [...]
>
> To require everyone installing the system build it from source
> would be inconvenient, and I see no benefit from it.
>
> For packages, we separate building from installation.
> We should do this for the whole system as well.
> It would be good to be able to built binaries for the entire system
> with `./configure; make', but installation would be a separate step.

With a source-based distribution, each software is tied in one single 
package, I mean the source, that you can customize according to your 
needs with the USE flags (I am thinking about portage, a package 
management system)
This approach seems more elegant and more powerful to me than binary 
distributions in which you have to deal with several package for the 
same software (emacs witout X, Emacs with X, Emacs with gtk+ for 
exemple)


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