* Ability to build and install binary packages with the same version but different USE flags. For example, MySQL server package (<code>-minimal</code> and MySQL client & libs package <code>minimal</code>)
** don't go there: this imposes a significant amount of maintenance work and may still break. Rather provide large enough base sets and accept that some packages install too much (you can still disable them at runtime) and build the few deviations from the rule on the servers from source --[[User:Tiziano|Tiziano]] ([[User talk:Tiziano|talk]]) 14:39, 3 January 2014 (CET)
*** Yes, we need to and can go there :-) I agree with you, that we should do this only if necessary, apache for example can be built once and has the ability to turn features (module loading) on/off via its configuration. Other software does not provide such run-time configuration which results in unwanted server-software and dependencies on the installed hosts (<code>net-analyzer/zabbix</code> for example). I clearly do not want to have a dedicated build environment for each of those packages, I would rather see a build env, called minimal for example, which is used to build all those database packages with only lib and clients enabled (use the same env for PostgreSQL, OpenLDAP, MySQL etc.). As stated before, the whole build process needs to be automated, so I don't see a considerable increase of maintenance work coming up here. The dependency problem is mitigated through the fact that we have a frozen portage tree for all our build envs and therefore use the same versions for all envseverywhere. --[[User:Chrigu|Chrigu]] ([[User talk:Chrigu|talk]]) 12:04, 6 January 2014 (CET)
* Providing binary packages for different major (and sometimes minor) versions, for example: <code>dev-db/mysql-5.X.Y</code> and <code>dev-db/mysql-6.X.Y</code>.
* Provide binary packages for pre-compiled Linux kernels and modules (not just a binary package of <code>sys-kernel/gentoo-sources</code>)