Gentoo news delivers:
The number of commits to the main ::gentoo repository has once more clearly grown in 2021, from 104507 to 126920, i.e., by 21%. While the number of commits by external contributors, 11775, has remained roughly constant, this number now distributes across 435 unique external authors compared to 391 last year. We may have recruited some of the top contributors. ;)
That is wonderful to read. Even though I’m not a day to day user, I root for Gentoo and its longevity. It’s one of these distributions I hope will last forever and will never lose its spirit.
Musl: Stage 3 tarballs for the alternative libc musl are now built using the main Gentoo repository only and have been published for several more arches and configurations. Work is ongoing to import more musl-related fixes and support patches from the musl overlay, with the objective that musl-based installations eventually work out-of-the-box in Gentoo.
I must admit — I don’t really care what kind of underlying libc library is in use. I think Alpine was either first or one of the first distributions that adopted musl support. Either way, it’s nice to see first-class support for it in Gentoo though.
Python: In the meantime the default Python version in Gentoo has reached Python 3.9. Additionally we have also Python 3.10 available stable, which means we’re fully up to date with upstream, and our Python has gained support for link-time and profile-guided optimization (LTO and PGO) during compilation.
In my experience Python always had top-notch support in Gentoo, but damn, this looks really nice, the team responsible for this is crushing it! 👌🏻
PPC64: The PowerPC profiles and downloads have seen significant updates and enhancements. Several new ppc64 little-endian profiles (desktop, Gnome, …) have been added to the Gentoo repository. Our weekly updated downloads now include little-endian stages optimized for the POWER9 CPU series, and big- and little-endian hardened musl stage files.
It’s been a while since I touched any PowerPC — I really wish I had some box with this architecture to give Gentoo a spin on it 🚀
Overall, incredibly good year for the Gentoo Project. I wish it all the best in 2022 and will keep on rooting in the meantime 🙌🏻
There’s much more quality info in the linked post, be sure to check it out.