If files are downloaded, they all are dropped in /usr/portage/distfiles . But this may produce quite some chaos. It is perfectly ok if you need to only download one file - but if you get some this may lead to confusion. E.g. if you emerge the xmms skins, the distfiles dir gets flooded with quite some .zip files. The same applies to software where multiple patches are applied. Ok, those are often named so that you know which package they belong to, but my point still remains valid. To solve this I propose to create a directory for each package which the files are then downloaded to. E.g. to distfiles/xmms (for both the sources and skins), to distfiles/xfree for all versions and patches and so on. By the way, my distfiles dir contains 445 files in 700 MB. Kinda unsorted. But a friend of mine also wants to install gentoo but he has a slow connection and thats why I would give him my distfiles dir but to save media space it would be nice to clean the things out which he doesn't need. Ok I am becomeing a storyteller thats why I finish now... Think this report already overdoes its purpose.
No. Adds unneeded complexity and doesn't let packages share files.
