So an old idea with some new fancy design. repos.conf like: [gentoo] location = /var/db/repos/gentoo sync-type = rsync sync-uri = rsync://rsync.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage auto-sync = true # new stuff type = ebuild-metadata-only # vs 'ebuild' ebuild-src-type = cvs ebuild-src-uri = ... ebuild-src-cvs-repo = ... Now, the idea is that in 'ebuild-metadata-only' repository type, Portage doesn't fetch/checkout the whole repository but only the metadata and profiles. I think it could also get ebuilds and licenses since they will be frequently used. Package directories are fetched on-demand. All the ebuild-src-* keys provide sync-like resources for fetching packages. What's important, they need to use a protocol that is capable of retrieving arbitrary past versions. Portage works like this: 1. 'emerge --sync' updates metadata, profiles, eclasses and licenses. 2. Further Portage operations work on md5-cache only, without looking for packages. 3. When Portage is starting the emerge run (i.e. before pkg_pretend()), it uses the ebuild-src to download all packages in the versions matching timestamp of the metadata cache. The detailed characteristics would depend on used syncing methods: - rsync+cvs & git+cvs would both save bandwidth and disk space. 'emerge --sync' would only fetch metadata via rsync (or dedicated git repo), then install runs would fetch the necessary packages via cvs. - git+git would only save some disk space. 'emerge --sync' would still fetch the whole repository but only metadata would be checked out. The necessary packages would be checked out during emerge runs.
