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Creating distro build tooling for a small community
A lot of people have been commenting on this over time so I figured I would put together a little post summarizing my thoughts on the matter and everything else.
The post is going to be quite large. Every section can be read more or less separately, but they are all connected to each other.
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When I started using Void in 2016, it mainly caught my attention as a system with a fairly low barrier of entry that did not get in my way, while still being “normal” enough to act as a regular Linux system. Initially I found the way e.g. runit worked in there interesting and in many ways fresh over classic distros particularly in the pre-systemd era, while I found the post-systemd era rather unfun and daunting in general.
This was also why I ended up picking Void for the ppc64le port, as it felt small scope and approachable enough to give me a chance to reasonably maintain it by myself, while also having a compact and easily reachable community that wasn’t aligned with any particular commercial entity.
When I started the ppc64le port, I was already marginally familiar with the build tooling of Void but only really properly picked it up for the port.