Gentoo is a metadistribution with source-based package management (software is compiled instead of being installed from binaries). Although I haven't noticed any increase in credits per workunit with -O2 and -march=native optimizations (maybe there is some with -O3 and LTO), this approach can help to run projects on officially unsupported platforms (such as non-mainstream CPU architectures and alternative libc implementations).

In case anyone's interested in writing ebuilds for BOINC apps, I came up with two eclasses to make packaging easier and more convenient:

1. boinc-app.eclass
   Provides helper functions to install application files, app_info.xml (see BOINC Wiki on "Anonymous Platform") and wrapper jobs/symlinks.
   
2. boinc.eclass
   It will be needed to install applications, which use BOINC API, until 7.18 client release (it works around issue #2964 by building apps inside BOINC source tree).
   

I've already packaged sci-biology/cmdock (used by SiDock@home) and sci-biology/geneathome (used by TN-Grid) because I have a personal interest in them. Both can be installed from the guru overlay.

If you wish to contribute, request access to the ::guru overlay and choose some open source applications from this list or this forum thread.
If you've never maintained software for Gentoo, read the Gentoo Development Guide.

P.S. Stupid forum with its stupid "Can't create thread. Too many links" complain.

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