Weekly unstable stages are here!

Gentoo unstable or “tilde” (~x86, ~amd64) stages are now available for download at the following locations:

http://www.funtoo.org/linux/~x86
http://www.funtoo.org/linux/~amd64

I also have unstable OpenVZ templates available for download at:

http://www.funtoo.org/linux/openvz/~x86
http://www.funtoo.org/linux/openvz/~amd64

The plan is to build new unstable stages and OpenVZ templates weekly, so check back often and enjoy the fresh unstable builds.

One of the cool things in these unstable stages and OpenVZ templates is the inclusion of Roy Marples’ OpenRC scripts, which are an improved version of Gentoo Linux’s init script design.

Some important notes about these stages – they were built using a very slightly modified “funtoo” Portage tree, which can be downloaded at http://www.funtoo.org/linux/snapshots/ – look for the ones with the “funtoo-“ (rather than “portage-“) prefix.

For all the stages I build, including the stable ones, you can determine what Portage tree was used to build them by looking at the meta/snapshot.spec.txt file. So, for example, take a look at this snapshot.spec.txt file. You can see that the portname is set to “funtoo”, which indicates it’s built against my personal tree. Take a look at the version_stamp and you’ll know which Portage snapshot to download, in this case snapshots/funtoo-2008.08.18.tar.bz2. This is how my new version of catalyst supports building against multiple trees.

Currently, my changes are quite minor and are simply bug fixes to allow the unstable stages to build properly. I will be providing a means for people to see the patches to the mainline tree that I have applied in the near future. For now, I recommend that people don’t use coreutils-6.12-rX in the mainline tree (which I’ve masked in my tree.)

Thanks to current and former Gentoo Developers Zac Medico, Roy Marples and Doug Goldstein for their assistance with various issues over the weekend so that I could get these unstable stages out there. And much respect to Gentoo master Donnie Berkholz who originally suggested the idea of building unstable funtoo stages in a funtoo.org blog comment :)