Gentoo Linux

timberwolfblues · Rated R Joined: 03 Jun 2005 Posts: 81 Location: Indiana

Was reading an article in Tux, and online mag for newbies to the paradise of Linux and I was wondering why Gentoo has to recompile it's self everytime you have to update it. Dosen't that seem self-defeating? Confused

thePMG · Rated XXX Joined: 24 Apr 2004 Posts: 393 Location: Germany

What do you mean by "recompile it's self"?

Enforcer · Posted: Wed, 08 Jun 2005 15:27:56 Post Subject:

gentoo recompiles what you update. The point of Gentoo is to have all the binaries compiled with specific flags to optimize for your system. Anything you update is emerged as code and compiled on the spot so that the code runs as optimzed as you want for your system in particular. You aren't recompiling the kernel or required system files when you update for example firefox. You only update the firefox binaries and any dependacies that also have updated code.

timberwolfblues · Rated R Joined: 03 Jun 2005 Posts: 81 Location: Indiana

Hmmmm the way that article read, it seemed like eveytime you updated something the entier OS and everythign associated with it had to recompile. Maybe I read it worng. I have been know to do that.

Dud3! · Posted: Sat, 11 Jun 2005 14:55:33 Post Subject:

They were probably talking about updating world.

If you type emerge -uD world it will check to see if there are newer version of everything on your system, get the ones that are new, and compile them.

So if you waited long enough between updating world, you probably would end up recompiling the entire system.

If you keep your system up to date, there will be maybe 10 things to compile when you update world.

On the same note, if your system was really out of date and you update one program and told it to do deep dependancy checking (the -D) then it might update almost all of the system.

timberwolfblues · Rated R Joined: 03 Jun 2005 Posts: 81 Location: Indiana

Ok that makes more sense. Thanks for putting that into a better perzpective. I was tired when I read it anyway lol Razz