One missing feature in portage is the lack of package sets. Before we
(re)start working on that however I’d like to get some feedback about
what properties/features people would expect from portage package set
support.
Some key questions:
– should they simply act like aliases for multiple packages? E.g.
should `emerge -C sets/kde` be equivalent to `emerge -C kdepkg1 kdepkg2
kdepkg3 …`? Or does the behavior need to be “smarter” in some ways?
– what kind of atoms should be supported in sets? Simple and versioned
atoms for sure, but what about complex atoms (use-conditional, any-of,
blockers)?
– should sets be supported everywhere, or only in selected use cases?
(everywhere would include depstrings for example)
– what use cases are there for package sets? Other than the established
“system” and “world”, and the planned “all” and “security” sets.
– how/where should sets be stored/distributed?
Probably the most suitable thing are regular expression. Allowing people to use them like in PLD Linux would be very effective and made everyone happy without the need of creating and maintaining packages sets.