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Frank Peters wrote: |
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> Maybe I'll post some ebuilds for cooledit and nedit. These are two |
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> text editors for which I've filed bug reports and fixes, but there |
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> has been no action yet due to lack of maintainers. |
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> |
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> It may be a while though. After quickly looking through the developer's |
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> manual, I can anticipate a fair amount of study before I can write even |
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> a simple ebuild. |
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> |
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|
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If you take the time to learn there is an option to become a |
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proxy-maintainer of a package. Essentially you would actually maintain |
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the package, but a gentoo dev would be officially responsible for it and |
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would supervise all work on it. This works well for specialized ebuilds |
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that would otherwise not be in portage, but where we have an interested |
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user. The dev that works with you would also be able to help out with |
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any sticky ebuild issues. |
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|
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Keep in mind that simple ebuilds actually are fairly simple. The only |
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issue is that some packages are really picky about how they are built |
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and that can get tricky. |
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|
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Also, many devs (such as me) aren't intimately familiar with every |
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eclass out there - ebuilds can do quite a bit and you can get started |
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just knowing a moderate amount of the basics. Half of the job of a dev |
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is just knowing what does and doesn't cause bigger issues so that you |
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can safely get stuff done without having to actually know everything. |
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Of course, in a proxy-maintainer relationship the proxy doesn't really |
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need to worry about this stuff since somebody else is providing some QA |
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oversight. |
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|
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There are also lots of developer/staff roles in gentoo beyond just |
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maintaining packages. There are some that just do documentation work, |
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and many who focus primarily on testing/stabilizing packages. It isn't |
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for everybody, but if you have decent IT skills and a reasonably mature |
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mindset it isn't that hard to get into. More than anything you need to |
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be somebody who can be trusted - every time you run emerge you trust |
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that gentoo won't hose your system, and to make that happen we need to |
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have devs who understand basic QA and are responsible with the power |
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they wield. |
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