Heh. In my last job we used Gentoo as the build system for an embedded system. It was a joy to use. In my current job we use naked Makefiles chained together. I waste somewhere near 50% of the day building things I don't need to build, rebuilding things because the last time they were built it was with the wrong options, fixing build bugs where modifications didn't make it into the final binary etc etc etc. Makes me weep.
But seriously, Gentoo was the bomb. Your package doesn't impact anyone else until it's .ebuild is updated. You can precompile most units of the system once a day and download them as binaries. For 4 years of my life I didn't have to worry how things were being built, except for my own very small part that I had mastered. Bliss.
Can you describe more how it worked? I would assume as it's based on bsd ports that one is simply using a common Make file library and then building fairly Independant components.
The problem presumably starts when decomposing a monolithic build and how do you pull it all together again?
I have stalled at pyholodeck.mikadosoftware.com and need some inspiration to pick that over the 100 other things I needs to do :-)
It's a big system, and not something that you can do piecemeal. You basically need management buy-in. So I've been busy recruiting support from other developers and lower-level managers, writing memos that describe the problem to the higher-ups and so on.
But seriously, Gentoo was the bomb. Your package doesn't impact anyone else until it's .ebuild is updated. You can precompile most units of the system once a day and download them as binaries. For 4 years of my life I didn't have to worry how things were being built, except for my own very small part that I had mastered. Bliss.