Introduction

Why automatically build packages?

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 building the same package on multiple machines.

With the advent of virtualisation technologies such as Xen, which we discuss in the Virtualisation with the Xen hypervisor document, encouraging the installation of more and more complete operating systems on a single physical system this problem has become even more pronounced.