John - Rolling packages

I have a few questions regarding ports and packages.

I'm using FreeBSD on my desktop and FreeNAS on my server, in fact you guys talked about my server build http://ramsdenj.com/2016/01/01/FreeNAS-Server-Build.html in episode 126. Hearing you guys talk about poudriere so much I was thinking about setting it up on a low-powered HP470 server I recently acquired when its previous owner upgraded to a different server.

First of all I was wondering what your opinions were on at which use case it makes sense to set up your own repository. Seeing as I only have two machines does it even make sense? I would be compiling packages for use in jails on my FreeNAS server, but mostly for use on the desktop.

If set up poudriere on the HP 470, I was wondering if this is too low powered of a the machine to run poudriere if I am not using ZFS. I assume I would need more than the measly 512MB of RAM the server has if I wanted to use ZFS anyway, so I was planning on avoiding it. I don't care if it takes a long time to compile packages (within reason) as long as it works. If I set the configuration fairly conservatively, and dont use ZFS, will this work? Or will the poudriere blow up in my face?

My only other poudriere based alternative would be setting it up in a jail on my FreeNAS box, this would work but during my reading I have seen warnings saying not to do this. Maybe you could set up an up a tutorial as to how to do this? I saw the tutorial on your website Allan, but it's out of date and I wasn't sure if the process remained the same in the three years since then.

Say I were to not set up poudriere, what is the best alternative? I've heard people talking about how you shouldn't mix ports and packages and people have different ideas about what the best solution to this is. There is locking packages and using a mix of packages and ports. Other people say just to use ports exclusively.

What would you say is the best solution to the software acquisition process for a single user?

Thanks for the great show, keep it up.

John