Automated package building system for Gentoo Linux

Abstract

Whilst Gentoo Linux◳ is widely recognised for the extreme flexibility afforded by the unique combination of a source based distribution with the innovative portage package management system allowing customisation of the build of most major applications using use flags it is often decried for the time taken to perform an installation as well as the time wasted by repeatedly building the same packages on multiple machines.

This document aims to address this problem by implementing a "build server" responsible for automatically building updated packages as well as making those pre-built binary packages and relevant configuration information available for use by client machines.

Contents

• Introduction
  • Why automatically build packages?
• Creating a Xen virtual machine
  • Creating volumes and filesystems
  • Install a Linux virtual machine
  • Configuring a Xen virtual machine
  • Configuring the Linux virtual machine
• Creating a 64bit build-space
  • Synchronising the portage trees
  • Installing the build-space
  • Configuring the build-space
  • Building the binary packages
• Creating a 32bit build-space
  • Synchronising the portage trees
  • Installing the build-space
  • Configuring the build-space
  • Building the binary packages
• Sharing and using the repositories
  • The importance of shared configuration files
  • Sharing configuration files and kernel sources
  • Synchronising the testing repository to the stable repository
  • Using the repository on the build-server
  • Sharing the testing and stable repositories using NFS
  • Using the stable and testing repositories over NFS
• Installing management utilities
  • Installing the layman overlay manager
  • Installing the Hacking Gentoo overlay
  • Installing the build-space utilities
  • Installing the build-server utilities
• Managing the build-server and build-spaces
  • Configuring the build-server
  • Configuring the build-spaces
  • Synchronising the live repository
  • Synchronising testing repositories
  • Building updated packages
  • Synchronising stable repositories