> I take it you've already observed that you can also share portage and > distfiles directories? Easiest is if they are on their own partitions but > there are tricks that can get the same effect if not. How to do this is left > as an exercise for the reader :-) with one tip for those who don't know: > > mount -o bind > -- > alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com I know about mount -o bind. However, (forgive me if this is naive), why not just a symlink? That is the way I do. I want my root partition to be small (for performance reasons), so I put things that don't need speed int its own partion, which I mount in /usr/local/slowpart (the name fits; the partition is at the end of the harddisk and 80% full, so it is slower than the root partion, that is at the beginning of the hard disk and 7% full. In this slowpart, I have DISTDIR, PKGDIR, and some personal files that are not frequently accessed (such as files I will likely never use but kept for safety). I configure DISTDIR and PKGDIR in make.conf, but the personal files are linked to my home via symbolic links.
Another reason for having a different partition is that I can easily backup my other personal data to it when I have to format the root partition.
